Metopius | BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. 9 

5. peltator, Marsh. 
Metopius peltator, Marsh. Ent. Ann. 1874, p. 130; Voll. Pinac. pl. xvii, 
heomlvet la, 9. 
Head with the facial shield narrowly flavous laterally and above; palpi 
black. Antennae unicolourous black. Thorax black sometimes with a 
short flavous line before the radices. Scutellum apically flavous, depressed 
and sinuate with the angles prominent, deplanate and obtuse. Abdomen 
black and not caerulescent, dull and rugose, becoming smoother apically 
with the pygidium punctate and subnitidulous; first segment flavous with 
its base and a central longitudinal line black; second with the apical 
angles alone flavous; apical margin of the discally subcarinate third to 
sixth segments concolorous, that of the fifth narrower and of the sixth 
linear. Legs flavous with femora except at base and apex, and the coxae, 
black; hind tarsi infuscate. Wings fulvescent with the costa a little 
darker, and the radial with external cubital cells subdeterminately in- 
fumate; tegulae black; radix and stigma fulvous. Length, 15—17 mm. 
Marshall, who erred in supposing the two basal segments to be one, 
points out that JZ. dessectorius is the only previously known British species 
of this genus with distinctly infumate wings, and that this has the abdo- 
men caerulescent with the basal fasciae never centrally complete as in the 
present species; this he considers most closely allied to AZ. fusctpennis, 
Wesm. 
I saw the type specimen of this species in the late Dr. Mason’s col- 
lection in Sept., 1900; it is labelled ‘‘ Milford on whitethorn blossoms, 
June 1, 1866.” Marshall writes: ‘‘ Found in a wood of young oaks near 
Milford Haven, in May, settling on blossoms of the whitethorn” (Mar- 
shall, /.c.); and it is now in the National Collection. I also possess a 
single small Q captured by the late Mr. A. J. Chitty, in the New Forest, 
in June, 1893. 
