278 BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. {Ophion 



litia (Gaulle). It is, however, unknown in Holland and Belgium; and I 

 can find no British notes of captures, though in all our Catalogues since 

 Curtis' time; the seven examples in Mas. IJrit. are correctly named, but 

 without localities. 



16. bombycivorus, Grav. 



Ophion bombycivorus, Gr. I.E. iii. 705, ? ; Brisch. Schr. Nat. Ges. Danz. 1880, 

 p. 135 ; Bridg. -Fitch, Entora. 1884, p. 178, ^ ? . Stan ropocf onus boiiibvcivorus, 

 Brauns, Arch. Nat. Meckl. 1889, p. 94 ; Schm. Opusc. Ichn. <? ¥ . 



Ochraceous, with more or less extensive black markings. Head usually 

 with onlv occiput and an ocellar mark black ; ocelli large and occupying 

 whole of the very short vertex. Antennae distinctly longer than body, 

 fulvous with their basal third black. Thorax with no notauli; mesonotum 

 usually with three often confluent discal vittae, with variable sternal and 

 metanotal marks, black; metanotum nearly smooth before the strongly 

 elevated basal transcarina, thence extremely strongly multicarinate to the 

 obviously produced apex. Scutellum coarsely punctate and only basally 

 carinate. Abdomen partly black ; two basal segments linear with apex 

 of first nodose and apical half of second rounded. Legs slender, usually 

 with hind femora and more or less of hind coxae black. Wings sub- 

 infumate and narrow, with costa black and the fulvous stigma sulDlinear ; 

 radial nervure simply and abruptly curved, and incrassate, basally with a 

 glabrous area below base of stigma containing no corneous marks ; ner- 

 velet wanting; the subsinuate brachial nervure subparallel with upper 

 basal ; nervellus intercepted above its centre. Length, 9-10 lines (Grav.) 

 or 24-26 mm. (Brit.). 



Rare and local in central Europe; probably coextensive with its only 

 known host. The type was bred at Breslau "e pupa Bomhycis fagV' by 

 Gravenhorst, who received a second female from Hanover ; Desvignes 

 says Mr. B. Standish also bred it in Britian and Brischke raised both 

 sexes in Prussia from larvae of the same Lepidopteron ; Norgate had the 

 same experience (Bridg.-Fitch). But it is certainly very rare with us and 

 I have heard of no captures in the field. Its irregularly cylindrical, 

 shining, and castaneous-black cocoon, which Brauns describes as elliptic, 

 bronze, rugose with a shaggy outer covering, is poorly figured at Entom. 

 xvii, pi. ii, fig 10, from the New Forest; its envelope, as Bridg.-Fitch say, 

 "appears to project out of the cylindrical shape of the inner one ; it 

 measures eight lines by five; there are but a very few silky hairs on the 

 cocoon." It is recorded from France by Dours, but from neither Belgium 

 nor Sweden, I have an unlocalised female from Beaumont's collection 

 and another bred by Chitty in 1893; probably all the British records are 

 from the New Forest, whence Mr. Blair kindly sent me a male, together 

 with its cocoon and outer envelope, having removed the surrounding 

 beech-leaves, remarking that it had emerged on the 7th June, 1906, from 

 a larva of Stauropus fagi: "the larval skin of the host, thoroughly cleaned 

 out, was rammed down to the hinder end of the cocoon." All but the 

 type seem to have demolished their host before it pupated, which goes to 

 disprove Edwin Birchall's tentative assumption (E.M.M. 1877, p. 232) 

 that the very striking attitude assumed by the Lobster Moth caterpillar 

 while feeding is in order to render it inconspicuous to ichneumons. 



