142 BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. [Lycorina. 



that Tischbein once saw them swarming round an aspen, and several 

 times bred them from the longicorn beetle, Saperda popidnea {cf. Trans. 

 Ent. Soc. 1907, p. 31). I have been enabled to somewhat amplify the 

 published description of this species by the examination of a female cap- 

 tured by Bignell at Bickleigh, on 5th August, 1881 ; he tells me fin lit. J 

 that he has bred another of the same sex from Paedisca pro/undana, in 

 Devonshire. I was so fortunate as to sweep a female from young trees in 

 the Belstead woods, near Ipswich, on i6th June, 1902; the above longi- 

 corn is not uncommon there. 



GLYPTA, Gravenhovst. 

 Gr. I.E. iii. (1829), 8. 



Head distinctly transverse, more or less strongly contracted behind the 

 oval eyes ; frons sometimes with cornigerous excresences, vertex narrow ; 

 clypeus convex, apically rounded or subtruncate, sometimes densely pilose 

 apically, and nearly always indistinctly discreted from the usually prominent 

 epistoma ; genal costa continuous. Antennae slender and filiform, about 

 the length of the body. Thorax stout and gibbulous ; notauli indistinct ; 

 metathoracic area complete, obsolete or wanting ; petiolar area semicircu- 

 lar, usually entire but with the basal carina sometimes deficient; apophyses 

 obsolete, spiracles small and subcircular. Scutellum convex and triangu- 

 lar, apically obtuse and rarely pale-marked. Abdomen sessile, dorsally 

 deplanate and somewhat shining, linear or sublanceolate, with the three 

 apical segments becoming gradually narrower ; often centrally, or with 

 the central segments apically, red ; basal segment a little curved, laterally 

 margined, with more or less elongate and evident discal carinae, and 

 spiracles close to its base ; second to fourth segments with epipleurae 

 inflexed and always with two oblique and linear impressions, rising from 

 the apical angles and coalescing at or converging towards the centre of 

 the base ; apical ventral segment incised apically and not retracted ; 

 terebra varying from a little shorter than the abdomen to much longer 

 than the body ; valvulae of (^ incrassate and apically obtuse, rarely nar- 

 rower with the apex subacuminate. Legs somewhat slender, nearly 

 always with the hind femora red and ^•ery often their tibiae black and 

 white at the base ; hind calcaria of unequal length ; fifth tarsal joint 

 usually longer than the fourth, their claws generally sparsely and finely 

 but distinctly pectinate, sometimes simple or internally setose. Wings 

 somewhat narrow and not large, with no areolet ; first recurrent nervure 

 of hind wings intercepted below the centre. 



This genus is instantly known by the \ery conspicuous oblique abdom- 

 inal impressions, a feature found also only in Lycorina among the Ichneu- 

 monidae. Similar Iniear modifications of the exoskeleton are found in 

 the genus Bassus, etc., but in that case they are directly transverse and 

 not duplicated as in this genus. Those species bearing frontal excres- 

 cences have been placed by Forster in distinct genera, which are now — 

 forty years after publication — becoming adopted ; but the value of such 

 genera, based upon a single feature of no matter how much validity, can 

 have no foundation in Nature when the whole remainder of its parts are 

 identical, especially when intermediate forms (such as G.parvicornuta and 

 G. teres in the present genus) exist. A distinct genus might, with more 

 propriety, be erected upon the abbreviated petiolar area of the G.flavono- 

 tata-group ! 



