
vi PREFACE. 

operations that are now carried on will ere long show, far more con- 
clusively than can the closest investigations of the littérateur, to what 
extent species, now considered closely allied, are in reality distinct. 
In investigating how far the records of our older authors are reliable, I 
have had the great advantage of thoroughly working out the entire cap- 
tures of both Stephens and Desvignes which, with those from Heysham* 
and others, form the nucleus of our National Collection of indigenous 
examples. Every specimen has been fully examined, and synonymised to 
the best of my ability with the names of other authors, while they are 
further useful in correcting many faulty determinations, resulting from 
their captors’ sole knowledge of Gravenhorst’s work ; I have frequently 
been astonished how correctly their Tryphonides have been named from 
the latter’s somewhat bald and superficial descriptions, though on the 
other hand a great many were, unavoidably, misplaced. 
I have adhered to the earlier practice of using a capital letter for those 
specific titles obtained from proper names. To those of us with some 
recollection of our classics, such forms as Cerambyx heros, Lycaena adonis 
are irritating and objectionable; so too are the titles of gods and men of 
old mythology given by Francis Walker to hundreds of Chalcididae, when 
(as is done in the British Museum Catalogue of 1910) they are shorn of 
individuality and almost of meaning by suppression of the capital letter. 
Yet more bizarre appear the names of men with whom one holds daily 
intercourse: see Thyamis waterhousei, Tenthredopsis thornleyi and 
Ripersia tomlinii, while in the case of great masters of our Science they 
rankle deeper: Ichneumon gravenhorsti, Stylops kirbyi, Stenamma west- 
woodi. I utterly fail to find any counterpoise of good purpose served by 
this arbitrary innovation. It is a quite recent practice and might still, 
with combination, be successfully combated. I know not where it origin- 
ated: the British Museum officials have no arguments in its favour 
except that it is “their usual style,” and the English entomological maga- 
zines own they simply “follow the custom”’—a modern freak ! 
As in previous subfamilies, it has been my object throughout to set 
forth what is known rather than to describe new species. If ever the 
classification of the world’s Ichneumonidae is to be reduced to a com- 
prehensible system, it will alone be accomplished by the most rigorous 
and unstinting synonymy. In its earliest stages, in the works of Linnaeus 
himself, the dissimilarity of the sexes caused them to be described under 
distinct names; Gravenhorst did much to reduce synonomy of this sort, 
but the lack of essential structural features in his own accounts of new 
kinds rendered the reproduction of the same insects under new names by 
Wesmael and Holmgren inevitable; and, although this instance of the 

*“ Dr, T. C. Heysham, of Carlisle; died 6th inst. He was well known, especially in former 
times, asa Naturalist and Entomologist, and had fine collections.” (Ent. Weekly Intelligencer, 18th 
April, 1857, p. 24). C. G. Barrett’s record in the same magazine, p. 29, of an Jchneumon which *‘ was 
a little larger than the common one which infests the larva of Mamestra Persicariae, and black, 
except a band of bright orange-red, extending from the thorax nearly half way along the abdomen,” 
isan carrying off a spider, must refer to some species of Pompilus, perhaps P. viaticus, Linn. He 
terms his note “‘ Ants, versus Ichneumon and another.” 
