40 HYMENOPTERA. 



prove favourable for our purposes, to have an opportunity of 

 investigating some of the mysteries of the vespiary. 



There is another phase connected with the deposition of 

 eggs by worker wasps, which I hope will ere long be fully 

 investigated ; that is, whether eggs deposited by workers 

 ever produced more than one sex, workers, — and also males. 

 In Dr. Ormerod's paper on wasps such a statement certainly 

 is not positively made, probably it may not be intentionally 

 implied, still, as both workers and males were developed from 

 a nest, long after it had been deprived of its queen, and as it 

 is not by any means satisfactorily shown, whether the eggs 

 which produced the males were deposited by the queen, or 

 by the workers, it would be a point of great interest, satis- 

 factorily to decide this important question ; again, it would 

 also be a highly important physiological inquiry to ascertain, 

 whether workers, produced from worker eggs, are also fertile. 

 I am of opinion, that we are at present only on the threshold 

 of the way leading to the discovery of the history of the Ves- 



OBSERVATIONS ON PARASITIC 

 HYMENOPTERA. 



In the month of June I obtained nearly a hundred nests of 

 the interesting little Arachnide, Agelena hrunnea, my object 

 being to ascertain what species oi IchneumomdcB were parasitic 

 upon the spider. The first insect which I obtained was He- 

 meteles formosus ; and shortly afterwards, both sexes of 

 Pezomachus fasciatus; I had never previously obtained a 

 male of any species of that genus. Tiie males of the genus 

 Pezomachus are extremely rare in collections, nearly all of 

 them are winged insects, the females on the contrary are ap- 

 terous ; or, having in one or two species rudimentary wings ; 



