
Bassides | BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. 79 
TRIBE 
BASSIDES. 
This Tribe appears to be very closely related to the Pimplinae in its 
sessile and often coarsely sculptured abdomen, which is in the typical 
form very distinctly impressed in the same manner, though transversely 
and not obliquely, as is the abdomen of Glyp/a and many Pmplae. It 
forms, however, an entirely homogeneous group, at once distinguished 
from all other 7r;phoninae and /chneumonidae by its species’ normal scu- 
tellum and apically bifid upper mandibular teeth, the peculiar conformation 
of the strongly deplanate and broadly sessile basal segment is also dis- 
tinctive, and the general facies are so peculiar that, with a little experience, 
these insects may be known ata glance. 
The name #assus, apparently a word of no meaning (unless from 
Bassaris, who was a priestess of Bacchus, in allusion to these insects’ 
frequency upon flowers !*), was first employed by Fabricius in his Systema 
Piezatorum of 1804; but the concourse of species there assembled under 
this title is truly diverse and includes Criptinae, Pimplinae, Ophioninae and 
even several kinds of Braconidae (cf. Curt. B. E. pl. xxiii) ; several of its 
species, not one of which really belongs here, are still catalogued under 
this genus, simply because they have never been subsequently recognised. 
But Bassus laetatorius, universally regarded as its type, was not even in- 
cluded thercin till so placed by Panzer in 1806! Gravenhorst recognised 
the Fabrician genus so little that in 1818 he proposed a new name, Dip- 
lazon, for it; nor can we at all suppose that he subsequently used this 
genus in the Fabrician sense, for it was originally described as having, 
inter alia, “corpus fere cylindricum, glabrum ; antennis longitudine cor- 
poris ; abdomine vix petiolato; aculeo varissime exserto.” ‘The genus as 
to-day represented by the Tribe Basszdes was not, in reality, created until 
Fallén in 1813 published his ‘Specimen novam Hymenoptera disponendi 
methodum exhibens.” 
Bassus formed Gravenhorst’s eighth group and was divided from 
Metopius, and the Pimplinae with convex abdomen, by having deplanate 
bodies with the basal segment flat and parallel-sided ; in it he placed the 
genera Euceros, Orthocentrus and Bassus, of which the last two had the 
antennae not centrally incrassate and the latter differed from Orthocentrus 
in its more slender legs. From the remainder of the Z7yphoninae, these 
three were said to differ in their entirely sessile abdomen. In 1855, 
Holmgren discovered that in Gravenhorst’s restricted genus the upper 
mandibular tooth was apically bifid, which in all other /chneumonidae, 
except certain J/e/opi7, is entire ; hence he erected a group for that genus 
alone, under the name Tryphonides-schizodonti. Desvignes, who in 
1862 described eleven species considered by him to have been un- 
known to Gravenhorst, knew nothing of Holmgren’s work. In 1868, 
Forster erected his foule of genera and divided the genus Bassus, Grav., 
into ten, giving the meagrest and often most trivial characters, with no 
indication of types: these genera are unfortunately being nowadays 
largely adopted, but I think with little justification, and only those 
* More probably it was borrowed by Fabricius from another drunkard (cf. Horace, Od. I, xxxvi, 
14) “ Neu multi Damalis meri Bassum Threicia vincat amystide"’; or the Pompeian leader, Cae- 
cilius Bassus, of B.c. 44, referred to by Livy (Epit. civ.), a member of whose family governed 
Alexandria under Tiberius, a.p. 38 (Philo in Flaccum). 
