XIV INTRODUCTION. 



represented in Europe. The Stilpnini, con.sisting of the genera Atractodes 

 (with ExolytLis) and Stilpnus have held a most anomalous position ; the 

 former was at first included in the Ichneumoninae and the latter in the 

 Ophioninae. Forster, however, recognized their relationship in 1876, and 

 they were relegated to a position at the end of the Cryptinae by Thom.son 

 in 1884. 



Turning to a consideration of what has been done in this sub-family in 

 Britain, we find one or two kinds mentioned at the beginning of the last 

 century by Donovan. vStephens, in September, 1835, classified Stilpnus, 

 Pezomachus, Ilemiteles, Mesostenus, Phygadeuon, Cryptus, Echthrus 

 and Atractodes as British genera, but he enumerates as indigenous only 

 five species of Stilpnus (as they still stand), twenty-seven of Phygadeuon 

 (sensii Into), and fifty of Cryi)tus, the remaining genera being simply 

 indicated. Two or three are noticed by Curtis as new, but these are now 

 nearly all synonymized with those of older authors, and Haliday described 

 sixteen supposedly new kinds in 1839. These latter are interesting, inas- 

 much as they have lain perdu ever since, and it is only now that they are 

 first synonymized with those of other authors ; the types are in the Dublin 

 Museum. Smith and Desvignes contributed some notes on the economy 

 of Hemiteles to the Trans. Ent. Society in 1859, and three years earlier 

 the latter's British catalogue was published. Following Gravenhorst's 

 nomenclature, he instances fifty-eight species of Cryptus, of which five are 

 described as new, twenty-five of Phygadeuon, three of Mesostenus (in- 

 cluding AI. transfiiga), fifteen of Hemiteles and twenty-three of Pezo- 

 machus, two of Atractodes and Stephens' five Stilpnus, giving a total of 

 one hundred and forty-one species, of which many are synonyms. Rev. 

 T. A. Marshall described two new Phygadeuones and several brachypterous 

 forms in the E.M.M., and in 1870 published his Catalogus, which raised 

 the British number to two hundred and fifty-four kinds (including Mesos- 

 temis gladiator and Forster's brachypterous genera). This was closely 

 followed by the same author's Catalogue, published by the Entomological 

 Society in 1872, which enumerates two hundred and seventy-one different 

 kinds.^ Then came a revulsion of feeling in favour of Ichneumonidae, 

 which took the tangible form of Bridgman and Fitch's " Introductory 

 Papers " in the Entomologist ; notes and local lists also began to appear. 

 Walker gave an account of those species which he took in the Isle of 

 Man, Parfitt and Hellins and Bignell in Devonshire, Bloom field and 

 Butler about Hastings (embodied in my Vict. Hist. Sussex list), Wilson 

 and Roebuck and Bairstow in Yorkshire, Dale and Pickard-Cambridge in 

 Dorsetshire, Marquand in Cornwall, Bridgman in Norfolk and Capron in 

 Surrey. Subsequently we have lists from Essex (Harwood, in Vict. Hist.), 

 Johnson in northern Ireland, Luff in the Channel Islands, and my 

 accounts of the Ichneumonidae of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk in the 

 Victoria History. All these contributed to swell the total, till, in 1901, I 

 found it to stand at three hundred and seventy British species of Cryptinae. 

 It was very obvious, however, that among this mass was a great deal of 

 synonymy regarding Forster's Pezomachus, his brachypterous genera in 

 relation to macropteious Phygadeuones, and the opposite sexes in general. 

 This I have endeavoured to obviate to the best of my ability, with the 



1 All thfi species referred to as doubtfully inditjenous ainoiiK tlie Cryptinae in this Catalogue by 

 its author (Trans. Ent. Soc. 1S72, p. z(f\), eg,. Liiioccias iiuicrobatus, Ntiiinlopodiiis /ormosiis,Catalytus 

 futveolatus and Agrothofiites abbrevintor, have now been abundantly confirmed. 



