Orthocentrini | BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. 55 

vignes instanced only three in 1857, including O. daricis, Hal. Of these 
the other two were O. anomalus, Grav., and O. incisus, Grav. (Cat. 91); it 
is difficult to understand what he wished to convey by these names, how- 
ever, since he placed two males of O. marginatus, Holmgr. (1855) and a 
male of some Plec/iscid under the former name (a headless male of the 
former is also labelled “ anoma/us” in Stephens’ writing); while under 
the latter he placed a medley of ¢ O. fulvipes, Q S. laricis and S. inter- 
medius. Marshall instanced eleven species in 1872, of which five were not 
known to Thomson, but I think there can be no doubt that the positions 
here assigned to them in his grouping are correct, though M. de Gaulle 
places O. cognatus, Holmgr., in the subgenus Orthocentrus ; O. spurius is 
almost a nomen nudum, but doubtless referrable to the same section, and 
said by Haliday, in his MS. diary which I have seen in the Dublin 
Museum, to have been taken commonly by him in Ireland; O. /aviczs is 
quite certainly synonymous with S. fortipes, Thoms. ; O. dznofatus cannot 
be far removed from S. silvaficus ; while O. incisus, Gravy., is practically 
unrecognizable and we have no true right to it as British. ‘The genus 
Neurateles, Ratz. (Ichn. d. Forst. ii. 86) is now generally conceded to 
belong to the Orthocentrini, though placed by Marshall at the end of the 
Ophioninae, among such aberrant genera as Col/yria and F'xefas/es ; Bridg.- 
Fitch omit it and point out (Entom. 1884, p. 123) that Ratzeburg 
describes none of the present group, hence the probable synonymy, and 
Thomson indicates it as identical with his first section of S/enomacrus, of 
which I am not aware that we possess any representatives in Britain, 
though Haliday told Marshall that he had discovered V. papyraceus, Ratz., 
here (and a MS. note of his in the Dublin Museum indicates that he 
found it commonly in Ireland); but the description is too short to recog- 
nise the species. 
Bridgman paid very little attention to this group, brought forward no 
new indigenous species and only records three and a fourth doubtfully 
from Norfolk (Trans. Norf. Soc. 1893, p. 628), adding “1 have several 
other species of this genus, but from the great difficulty there is in 
identifying these very small Ichneumons I prefer to leave the doubtful 
species out of the list.” He appears, however, to have subsequently paid 
some attention to the subject, since Bignell’s records (Trans. Devon. 
Assoc. 1898, p. 499) show almost the only additions we have had since 
1872, and include six species. All the latter’s Ichneumonidae were 
named by Bridgman, and such as he failed to determine in this group 
(some seventy examples) were presented to me by Bignell in 1903; Mar- 
shall also gave me those he could not name; and I have had the advan- 
tage of examining the specimens from Stephens’, Desvignes’, Smith’s and 
Marshall's collections in the British Museum. 
In order to adequately work out the three hundred and _ fifty specimens 
in my own collection and the sixty in the Museum, I have found it 
necessary to tabulate the whole of those instanced by ‘Thomson and to 
amplify his meagre characters by the fuller descriptions of Holmgren and 
Brischke. The task was not light, but the result must be regarded as 
satisfactory, since I have no hesitation in stating that the following table 
is far more lucid and contains‘more definite characters than I had dared 
to expect before approaching the subject. Doubtless other species will 
be found in Britain, and specimens must consequently not be forced here ; 
Holmgren described fifty distinct kinds and these have been augmented 
by Brischke, Thomson and Szepligeti. 
