Piniphu] BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. 71 



eknecht who, curiously enough, does not notice it in his subsequent de- 

 tailed description: perhaps he gives it hyperthetically- 



In puncturation, colour and sculpture it is remarkably like P. melanoce- 

 phala and it is also curious that two so closely allied species should prey, 

 as far as is at present known, exclusively upon insects inhabiting the 

 common reed, though the ditTerence between a Lepidopterous and Dipter- 

 ous diet can hardly account for the obxious abreviation of the penultimate 

 tarsal joint of the latter species, which will at once distinguish it from P. 

 arumiinator. 



This species, originally recorded from among reeds in Austria, appears 

 widely distributed though uncommon in central and northern Europe. It 

 is said to occur in Belgium in July and August; Dr. Giraud has bred it in 

 the isles of the Danube, near Vienna, from both Lipara lucins and Z. to- 

 mentosa, in the stems oi Arnndo phraguiitcs r and there is a black female 

 bred from the former host in the Strassburg INIuseum. It was brought 

 forward as British in .Marshall's 1870 Catalogue, but no one has recorded 

 the species here since that time, though it is bv no means uncommon in 

 marshy places on reeds, etc., from the middle of May to the middle of 

 June. Tuck has found it at Tostock, Thornley at Mablethorpe in Lines. 

 and South Leverton, in Notts., Capron at Shere and it has several times 

 occurred to me in the spring : in a marshy pit at Gallows Hill near Need- 

 ham, at Harleston, in the Bramford marshes and Barnby Broad, as well 

 as in August in Tuddenham Fen and Chippenham Fen, on the flowers of 

 Angelica. Morey has found it in Parkhurst Poorest, in the Isle of Wight, 

 in early August. 



13. didyma, Giar. 



Pinipla didyma, Gr. I.E. iii. 178; Holragr. Sv. Ak. Handl. 1860, n. 10, p. 24 , 

 Tasch. Zeits. Ges. Nat. 1863, pp.58 et 267, ? ; Ratz. Ichn. d. Forst. i. 114; Schm. 

 Zool. Jahrb. 1888, p. 518, i ¥ . 



A black and tuberculate species, with elongate terebra and pale-marked 

 face. Head somewhat narrowed behind the large and internally slightly 

 emarginate eyes ; frons glabrous and impressed on either side above the 

 scrobes; face smooth and pubescent with shallow and diffuse puncturation, 

 of 9 centrally impressed, of J entirely flavous ; cheeks very short, in (J 

 subobsolete ; palpi and mandibles except apex of the latter in 9 fulvous, 

 in J flavous as is the clypeus ; labrum pale ; face of 9 with two sometimes 

 confluent flavous marks beneath the scrobes; all the orbits innnaculate. 

 Antennae distinctly stout, subfiliform and hardly longer than the head and 

 thorax in both sexes, infuscate throughout or basally ferrugineous beneath; 

 scape apically not deeply excised and in (J entirely flavous beneath. 

 Thorax black with a callosity before the radix, and in (^ the base of the 



*" M^moire sur les Insectes qui viveiit sur le Roseau comniun {Phia/imites communis, Trin., A lumlo 

 phragmites, L.)" Verb. Wien. z.-b. V'er. 1863, pp. 1251 — 1288. Also c/. Ann. Soc. I-"r. 1877, p 408. 



In this valuable article, which systematists appear to have almost entirely isnored and I have only 

 had an opportunity of examining after the above was in type. Dr. Giraud says that of 20 ? ? exam- 

 ined only two had the abdomen ■it all red, as indicated by Grav. He adds that it is very like that of 

 " P. graminellae, Grav." (certainly really P.detrita from his note, at /.r. p. 1291, that the c^ front 

 femora are excavate : he did not know Holmgren's work on the genus). He points out that the 

 discal carinae of the basal segment are strong, whereas in the latter they are but feebly indicated. 

 This distinction holds good in both sexes, of which he considers Ephialtes inanis. Gr., to be its male. 

 Certainly the male he bred frequently with /'. aruiulinalor,^ , is correctly referred to P. inanis (q.v.), 

 but it is more convenient to at present follow Thomson and Brischke in this respect. Giraud says it 

 is a frequent parasite of L. tomentosa, Mcq., about Vienna and emerges at the same time as its host, 

 whose galls on reeds it perforates a little below the apex. Its larva lives solitarily in the body of 

 that of the Dipteron and undergoes its metamorphoses in the latter's pupa. 



