2(J8 



placed in \\\C' forin of a S(Hi;u'('; tlic wing's havo in a high 

 degree that brilliant vioU't refh'clion which is found in many 

 8])ecies of this order; the legs arc thickly clothed with coarse 

 black hair. 'I'he first time 1 saw it, it was fluttering along 

 the ground, half flying, half crawling, carrying the larva of a 

 lamelliconi beetle in its month, as big and as long as my little 

 finger, indexed ninch larger and heavier than itself; I was tohl 

 that it is in the habit of bnrying these in the ground. Doubt- 

 less, like many other similar insects, it stupefies the larva, 

 withont killing it, and then lays its egg in the hole with it, so 

 that the yonng, as soon as hatched, finds its food thns ready 

 prepared for it. The insect is somewhat (dumsy in its motions, 

 even when nnincnmbered ; sometimes fluttering along the 

 ground, thns, a few inches at a time, so slowly as to be 

 readily canght, at other times flying fairly enongli, bnt with 

 a heavy, Inmbering flight. I do not believe that it is poisonons 

 or if it is, that it readily exerts its poAvers." 



It is ]n-obably only exceptionally that the Scolia (better 

 known in our lists as an EJis) would have occasion to bury its 

 prey or to transfer it from place to place. 



Forbes has reported Tipltla bnrying exposed Laclinosterna 

 larva (Illinois Expt. Sta. Bull. 118, and 24th Kept. 111. State 

 Ent., p. 159, 1908). 



Notes on the Thynnidae. 



BY J. C. P.RIDWELL. 



The Thynnidae are a family of Scolioid wasps presenting 

 several points of great interest. They combine extreme special- 

 ization due to parasitic habits with archaic characters re- 

 tained in but few Aculeate Ilymenoptcra. The incomplete 

 fusion of the thorax in both sexes with the pronotum and pro- 

 podeum movable upon the mesonotum and metanotum, is a 

 character of extreme interest and so far as I can learn found 

 in no other Aculeates. In many of the species the first cubital 

 cell is distinctly divided so as to form four closed cubital cells. 

 Both these characters seem to me extremely archaic. The 

 males have exceptionally strong powers of flight while the 



Proc. Haw. Ent. Soc. Ill, No. 4, May, 1917. 



