SPHEGID.£. 103 



Wotton'under-Edge, and -Mr. R. C. L. Perkins has taken 

 it at Oxford. These arc the only authentic records I have, 

 but it is probably mixed in many collections with unicolor. 



M. atra, Fab. — Black, shining, much larger than any of 

 the preceding. Head and thorax punctured, finely pilose, 

 face densely clothed with golden hairs, and with a short 

 central spine ; wings slightly smoky, second and thii-d 

 submarginal cells each receiving a recurrent nervure, pro- 

 podeum pilose, clathrately rugose, with a well-defined, 

 longitudinally rugose basal area ; abdomen with the petiole 

 long, smooth, somewhat flattened above, with a few long 

 hairs beneath, the rest of the abdomen finely punctured. 



c? with the antennte, mandibles, palpi, anterior and inter- 

 mediate legs, except the underside of their femora, reddish 

 yellow, posterior tarsi piceous ; antennje with the scape 

 very much dilated, flagellum compressed and dilated, the 

 eighth, ninth, and tenth joints excavated beneath and 

 serrate ; first and second joints of the intermediate tarsi 

 produced at the sides, the former with two acute spines at 

 the apex. 



? with the apical dorsal valve ver}- largely punctured 

 and carinated at the sides j posterior tibiis densely spinose, 

 calcaria pale. 



L. 10 mm. 



Very rare. I know of no recent captures. 



I possess a ? from Shuckard's collection without note of 

 locality, and F. Smith records a <J and 9 from Hawlej^, 

 Hants; and mentions that ho saw one on a flower near 

 Lowestoft. 



PSEN, Latr. 



Tliere is only one British species of this genus, which can 

 be known from any of its allies by the long slender calcaria 

 of the hind tibiae, and by the direction of the lower basal 

 nervure of the anterior wings, which scarcely forms an 



