94 BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. [Pimpla 



p. 4oq) from Aporia crataegi, Octnria dispardiwd the small Psjr/7e gra?/i/fii//a. 

 We have quite as many hosts again in Britain, where Marshall (Ent. Ann. 

 1874, p. 125) bred it ixova Ptilodvtitis palpina, Cymatophora ucu/aris, Liparis 

 salicis, Pontia brassicac, Smeritiihits t iliac and Aictia menihastri \ Newman 

 {l.c) from Chelonia caja ; and in The P^ntomologist we find Zygcuna 

 Jiliptiidiilat', Liparis chrysorrhoia, L. aiirijliia, Arctia caja, Pygcra buccp/iala, 

 Gonoptcra libatrix, Liihosia quadra, Ennomos tiliaria (1883, p. 67); 

 Triphaena fimbria (1884, p. 68); Liparis salicis (1880, p. 68) ; and 

 Dip//i//2cra orion {1S81, p. 14.1). Buckler adds Hade/ia chcnopodii, Vanessa 

 aialanta, Ypsipetes riibcraria and Smerinthus popiili as alternative hosts. 

 The above, ho\A'ever, are mere records with no details ; Curtis (Farm 

 Insects, 98) tells us that the larva lives singly in the chrysalis of Pontia 

 brassicae, and there changes into a white pupa, without forming any 

 cocoon of its own ; he savs the imago hatches in two or three weeks and 

 emits a most offensive scent when touched ; he had often seen females 

 running over fruit trees and in\'estigating every leaf and crevice to find a 

 proper object to receive their eggs, and limits their perfect state from 

 midsummer to ^lichaelmas. Marshall (/.r.) confirms its solitary habits 

 and says it undergoes its transformations with no other covering than the 

 skin of its \ictim ; " a parasite which I found in January in a puj)a of 

 P. brassicac — a naked maggot within the dry shell — lived in that state 

 without food till the spring, when it changed to a pupa, and afterwards 

 emerged as Pimpla insligalor, although I twice opened its case to see the 

 contents, and afterwards repaired it with a piece of paper." Bairstow 

 adds (Pl.^I.M. 1879, p. 36) that Harwood forwarded him some pupae of 

 Selcnia lunaria from which man\- of this parasite ^\ere bred. The larvae 

 became pupae about April 20th and imagines from 5th to 25th ot May. 

 Thirty or forty males were bred with no female, which, he says, is the 

 commoner sex on the wing ; he suggests that the females may emerge 

 later. The host-larvae were feeding in a canvas-covered enclosure, and 

 the parasites, creeping through the canvas, "performed their mission in a 

 most deadly manner." He adds it is a very common enemy of Odomslis 

 polatoria. My own experience is not extensive, though closer : on 24t]i 

 May, 1892, two very large females emerged from two chiysalids of 

 Smcrinlhiis tiliac, which 1 had dug at the base of an elm near Beccles 

 during the preceding November, when 1 had broken one open and 

 found it contained a large lana which, itself repaired the hole with dark 

 testaceous, horny secretion of great strength ; it emerged from the 

 extreme anus of the pupa, which was entirely excised. Again, on 19th 

 April, 1893, a female emerged from a pupa of Arctia menihastri, which I 

 had dug in the marshes at Ipswich during the preceding February ; it 

 emerged through the extreme capital end of its host's pupa, removing the 

 entire operculum, wliich was irregularly bitten round. The anal end of 

 the pupa contained the parasite's larval skin, surrounded by what appears 

 to be its exuviae but which are more probably eggs from the host-pupa ; 

 the capital two-thirds of the pupa were spun over irregularly with strands 

 of dull white silk, but forming no distinct cocoon. J^lair sent me a speci- 

 men bred in North London from Orgyia antiqita on 28th October, 1903 — 

 a very late date — remarking " Pupa of parasite lies free within the 

 partially cleared pupa of the host." Revd. C. D. Ash, who bred it at 

 Skipworth in Yorks from a pupa of Acronycta menyanthidis, of which he 

 found the larva there during the preceding August, confirms Curtis' 

 notice of the pungent odour when first emerged. 



