4 BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. [ Wetopius 

? black with all the tibiae, tarsi, apices of femora and of the hind tro- 
chanters, testaceous ; of ¢ flavous with only the hind coxae mainly, and 
their femora internally broadly, black; hind femora subcylindrical and 
not incrassate. Wings flavescent with radix and tegulae black or flavous- 
dotted, in @ entirely pale; stigma and costa fulvous. Length, 
I5—23 mm. 
Wesmael gives a ? variety with the flagellum entirely fulvous at least 
basally, a transverse flavous mark on the mesopleurae and _ the tegulae 
entirely concolorous; Holmgren’s @ is co-specific; this Thomson has 
erected into a distinct species under the name JZ. croceicornis, which I have 
not seen ip Britain, though Rev. H. S. Gorham has given me an example 
from Brittany, and it may be synonymous with the /chneumon chrysopus, 
Lewin bred from Phalaena T17folit, and Marsham described “ antennae 
setaceae: flavae.” “ce. an Trans. Linn. Soc..1797, p. 4, pl: n, fesse: 
These two species constitute Thomson’s subgenus Pé/focarus, distinguished 
by its apically bifid mandibles, deplanate oral costa and _ distinctly 
bifenestrate second recurrent nervure. The facial concavity of J/. den- 
/afus is more determinate below and its abdomen more finely sculp- 
tured ; but Thomson’s other characters appear variable and unreliable. 
This is decidedly the largest species of its genus with us, and appears 
to be very widely distributed but rare everywhere in Britain, as it is upon 
the Continent, where Wesmael regarded it as very uncommon in Belgium ; 
he knew it from Bordeaux and Florence; and it seems sparsely dis- 
tributed over central and northern Europe. Curtis says (B.E.) that it 
“has been taken in June by Mr. Bentley and Mr. Dale, near Ringwood, 
Hampshire, flying amongst pine-trees, in the sunshine; and by the latter 
gentleman also on the heathy side of a mountain near Ambleside, West- 
moreland”’ ; he adds that it has been bred from the pupa of aszocampa 
Trifolit, to which he considered (Farm Ins.) it to be especially attached. 
Two were taken in Augnst, 1831, by A. H. Davies, F.L.S., on the moors 
about Halifax in Yorks (Loud. Mag. 1832, p. 248, No. 25); one bred 
from Bombyx callunae at Keighley and given alive to Roebuck on 13th 
May, 1873; another bred from the same host from Rombald’s Moor ; 
others taken at Huddersfield by Bairstow and Varley, and at Halifax by 
Cash (Roebuck, Trans. Yorks. Union, 1877, p. 39); and at Bradford 
(7. c. 1878, p. 69). Bairstow records a fine ¢. from Goole Moor and 
speaks of it (/. c. 1882, p. 107) as of frequent occurrence in Yorkshire, 
saying that all those he had received from the East Riding were con- 
siderably larger than those from the West. A doubtful specimen taken 
at Pett (Vict. Hist. Sussex) ; Parley Heath, Dorset (Dale, Lepid. Dorset), 
and Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge has given me a @ from the same 
county. A 9 was bred from larva of Bombyx callunae in 1907 at Midg- 
ley, near Bradford (Rosse Butterfield; misnamed by me in Bradf. Sc. 
Journ. 1908, p. 71). Davies found a specimen had emerged in his breed- 
ing cage on 6th June from Bombyx quercus at St. Issey, Cornwall (E. M. M. 
1901, p. 171); and both Giraud and Mocsary have bred it from the same 
host. Bignell also records it from this host (Ichn. of S. Devon); and 
Parfitt raised it from a Laswocampa quercifolia pupa (Ichn. of Devon). I 
have once seen this species in the Bentley Woods, near Ipswich; Mr. 
Edward Buckell has given me a 6, probably taken at Romsey in Hants; 
I possess two with no data from Beaumont’s collection; and a somewhat 
immature ?, given me by Mr. J. B. Gordon, who ‘found it dead in the 
cocoon of Safurnia carpini, whence it had failed to emerge, on a great 
