216 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



v»bose researches into the life-history of our leaf-mining Hy- 

 nienoplera have added so largely to our knowledge of that 

 hitherto lillle-known family of insects, kindly brought me a 

 number of larvas he had found feeding on the leaves of Alnus 

 glutinosus (common alder) : they were evidently those of a 

 sawfly, the undivided epicranium and isolated ocelli re- 

 moving all possibility of their being lepidopterous, but their 

 form seemed equally to preclude the possibility of their 

 belonging to either of those sections into which 1 divided 

 the saw flies in 1832. The shape was perfectly onisciform, 

 the head being usually concealed, but capable of extrusion 

 at the will of the insect; the segments of the body being 

 clearly defined, each segment very thin and almost mem- 

 branous at the sides, and its extreme margin fringed with 

 hairs : neither legs nor claspers were visible from above, but 

 on turning the creature on its back the usual pair of scaly 

 legs were visible on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th segments; the 5th 

 segment was unprovided with either legs or claspers, and the 

 following segments, the 6th lo the 12th, both inclusive, each 

 possessed a pair of semitransparent claspers, very short, and 

 more resembling adhesive disks than the familiar claspers of 

 sawfly larvffi : I could not detect any claspers on the small 

 caudal segment. Mr. May, the able translator of Vollen- 

 hoven's admirable papers on sawflies, kindly undertook the 

 transmission of some of these curious creatures to M. Vollen- 

 hoven, and through his medium I have learned that the 

 larvai were already known to De Geer (vol. ii. sect. 2, plate 

 38, figs. 11, 12 and 13), to Reaumur (vol. v.. Memoir 3, pi." 

 12, figs. 17 and 18), and were also mentioned by Gustav 

 Dahlbom in his ' Clavis Novi Hymenopterorum S}stematis,' 

 but that no one had any knowledge ot the imago. Under 

 these circumstances it was iherelore with peculiar pleasure I 

 found that Mr. Healy had been successful in breeding the 

 perfect insect, and I have now larva, pupa and imago before 

 me, and have great pleasure in naming the species after the 

 indefatigable discoverer of its life-history. The antennse are 

 nine-joinled, clothed with a very short down, and taper 

 gradually to the tip ; the wing-cells are one marginal and 

 four submarginal ; three of these are equal in length ; the 

 fourth is square: the head and antennaj are black; the 

 thorax is black, with a triangular yellow spot in front of the 



