XXVlll INTRODUCTION. 



can give a sharp prick, though the pain is very evanescent. Tuck has 

 also been stung by an Ophion, and Charbonnier quite sharply by Me/a- 

 /lichneumoti kucomelas and Cryptus tarso/eucii^. 



Lastly, during the long winter months certain kinds of Ichneumonidae 

 are to be met with beneath the moss on and at the base of trees and 

 stumps, beneath fallen logs, under the bark of living and dead trees, and 

 many Pezomachi, &c., dwell among ground mosses in the early spring. 

 All these arc, of course, females belonging almost, or quite, exclusively to 

 the Ichneumoninae and Cryptinae. But the hibernaculum, which is most 

 favoured, is the clumps of the tuft grass (Aira [Dcsdianipsia^ caes/>it<>sn ), 

 which does not appear to have been before particularised for its fertility ; 

 the tuft should be cut off as near its roots as possible and conveyed home 

 in a bag. In an hour I have taken from a single tuft of this grass, about 

 a foot in diameter, which I had cut to the roots nineteen months before in 

 my favourite locality, the Bentley Woods, on 7th December, no less than 

 eighteen species represented by fifty-one specimens of Ichneumonidae. 



As to the mode and details of setting, I am inclined to say " chacun 

 a son gout," though I do not recommend the British method of card- 

 gumming, unless you are prepared to float the insects off before they 

 come to be identified, since the coxae, &c., are so often of primary im- 

 portance in determination, and I would stipulate that the mandibles be 

 always distended, especially among the Phaeogenides. I need hardly say 

 how valuable are full data of capture, or emergence, when attached. 



These insects are very liable to grease which. Dr. Knaggs has kindly 

 informed me, may most easily be removed by placing the affected subjects 

 in an air-tight bottle containing methylated ether, where they should 

 remain a week or so. A yellow deposit is sometimes left upon them, 

 which may usually be removed with a paint brush {cf. also Entom., 1878, 

 p. 23; E.M.M., 1895, p. 16.).^ 



METAMORPHOSES. 



It is by no means an easy matter to draw up a succinct account of tlie 

 metamorphoses of the Parasitica, since so little, comparatively speaking, is 

 known of the extremely interesting modifications through which they pass 

 from an adipose and apodous larva to a chitinous and active imago. 

 The following account, however superficial, will lend some idea of the 

 circumstances under which at least a part of the Ichneumonidae arrive at 

 maturity. 



The eggs of these insects are laid either upon, or inserted by the spicula 

 beneath, the skin of lepidopterous and other larvae, to which, in the 

 former case, they adhere by the viscous matter covering them. They are 

 elliptic or pyriform in shape and usually ashy-grey in colour at the moment 

 of oviposition, assuming a darker tint on contact with the air. Those of 

 certain genera of the Ophioninae, however, are somewhat bean-shaped and 

 are attached near one end by a long, slender and curved peduncle to the 



1 Referring to a remark of mine [cf. Field Naturalists' Quarterly, 1902, p. 40), Mr. Carleton Rea, 

 B.C.L., M.A., has been f;ood enougli to inform me that the " mould " which so often destroys lepidop- 

 terous pupae is Isaria farinosa, wliich is the anidial condition of Cordyceps militaiis ; he adds that 

 those which attack insects in cabinets are very varied, but, being of universal distribution, they are 

 almost impossible to e.xclude. 



