THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 187 



their young, and to a higher intellectual development, which 

 is shown especially in the arrangements made for the nourish- 

 ment of the larvae ; since it requires both greater energy and 

 more intelligence to discover and attack a particular species 

 of insect than merely to lay an egg on the plant which has 

 served the mother herself for nourishment," the passage from 

 the one to the other having, as he conceives, " been slow and 

 gradual;" and, "on the basis of this increased energy, 

 intelligence, and adaptability," a still further advance was 

 made by other groups, which, to secure their eggs from 

 molestation, transport their victims to a place of security, 

 involving certain difficulties with which many may have 

 found it impossible to cope. "Thus the ovipositor of the 

 Tenthredo became the sting of the wasp; and thus those 

 species which carried off their victim to a place of conceal- 

 ment would abandon the habit of laying their eggs inside the 

 victim." But the Tenthredinidae can in nowise be regarded 

 as inferior in intellectual capacity to the Cynipidae, which 

 exercise no constructive ingenuity in the production of their 

 gall-tenements, as exhibited by some of the former in the 

 weaving of their reticulated cocoons and other artistic 

 performances; while the admirable construction of their 

 double-saws, whose "various modifications might furnish 

 ideas for improved mechanical instruments," their multi- 

 cellular wings, and, in some instances, highly developed 

 furcate and pectinate antenna? (Schyzocerus male, Lophyrus 

 male) stamp them as infinitely superior in structural 

 organisation to the Cynipidae. Yet the natural affinities of 

 these respective families prescribe their relative sequence 

 and precedence in inverse ratio to their faculties and endow- 

 ments. As regards the " insect-piercing species," their 

 restrictive action being diffused over a vast extent of insect- 

 life, as compensating influences against excessive fecundity, 

 a multitude of these, distributed throughout the whole range, 

 serves to maintain due equilibrium on either side ; which is 

 oracularly interpreted as having " led to the formation of 

 many new species:" but this group consists of several very 

 distinct races, the lchneumonida3, especially those consorting 

 with the Aculeate tribes, being conspicuously superior in 

 energy and intellectual development to the Chalcididae, next 

 in succession, reputed higher in the scale of structural 



