NOTES ON HYMENOPTERA. 89 



tingiiished with facility, by its having the scale of the petiole 

 decumbent, resting on the oblique truncation of the meta- 

 thorax ; in JF". nigra the scale is upright. 



Myrmica c^^spitum. — This species is apparently most 

 abundant in situations near the sea; at Southend, Dover and 

 Bournemouth it is not uncommon ; and at the Land's-End I 

 found it in great numbers under blocks of granite in October 

 last. 



Methoca ichneumonoides. — Mr. Dale, as well as 

 myself, has found this very rare insect at Bournemouth. 



EvAGETHES BicoLOR, St. Farg. — St. Fargeau described 

 this insect in the " Encyclopedic Methodique," in mistake, as 

 the Aporus hicolor of Spinola; Shuckard endorsed the same 

 errorin his " Essay on the Fossorial Hymenoptera ;" the former 

 author has corrected himself in the " Histoire Naturelle," 

 and in that work established the genus Evagethes for the re- 

 ception of the species. In both genera the anterior wings 

 have the same number of marginal and submarginal cells, 

 but their relative proportion to each other is very different, 

 independent of other structural variations. In the genus 

 Aporus the prothorax is elongate, in Evagethes it is trans- 

 verse ; in the former the wings are inserted in the middle of 

 the length of the thorax, at the sides ; in the latter their in- 

 sertion is considerably before the middle ; Aporus has tri- 

 dentate mandibles, in Evagethes they are bidentate. 



I have hitherto held an opinion, differing from that of the 

 above-named eminent Entomologists, and have considered 

 Evagethes a variety of Pompilus pecthiipes (^crassiconiis, 

 Shuck.) I have on more than one occasion taken a specimen 

 in company with P. pectinipes, at Weybridge, and was led 

 to regard it as a variety of that insect, having the second 



