Scolobates | BRITISH ICHNEUMONS. 273 
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scape obliquely truncate apically. Thorax gibbulous, very smooth anda 
little longer than high. Scutellum black. Abdomen centrally broadly 
red, as long as the head and thorax, deplanate or in 9 convex and api- 
cally compressed ; basal segment straight, flat, discally subparallel-sided 
with prominent spiracles ; second subquadrate and the remainder trans- 
verse ; second, third and in @ often part of fourth, red; apical incisures 

pale; terebra very short and not extending beyond anus. Legs some- 
what slender with the hind ones stout and elongate; all the claws 
distinctly pectinate; anterior legs red, basally black; hind ones black 
with the femora and base of their tibiae red. Wings slightly clouded 
with stigma infuscate and radix testaceous ; internal and external radial 
nervures curved; nervellus opposite and strongly intercepted slightly 
below its centre. Length, 5—9 mm. 
The size is variable, and the convexity of the abdomen differs in the 
SEXES. 
This species was originally described from Austria; Gravenhorst knew 
it from Germany and Tuscany, but nothing of its habits; it was first 
recorded from France by Blanchard, and as frequent in Sweden by 
Holmgren; recently its occurrence in Canada and the United States of 
America has been noted. In referring to Bouché’s extremely doubtful 
breeding of a 2 from the pupa of Sphinx ocellafa, Ratzeburg says Erich- 
son first synonymised the Fabrician and Gravenhorstian names in 1848. 
Bouché also found it to prey upon the sawfly, Hyvdofoma pagana and this 
is confirmed by Giraud’s record of it (French Soc. 1877, p. 407) from HZ. 
rosarum, to which Gaulle adds H. berberidis and H. enodis (cf. also R. von 
Stein, Ent. Nach. vi, pp. 103—106). 
It has been known as British since 1835, when Stephens says it had 
already been taken very rarely, in July and August, within the London 
district ; the other species, referred to by Shuckard as indigenous, were 
certainly not cogeneric and Westwood knew none such in 1840. Few 
Hylotomae are common in Britain, which may account for this species’ 
S 
