42 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



in the ' Notes on Chalcidiae.' The Eiirytomidae and the 

 ToryraidaB have move mutual affinity than there is between 

 either of" them and any other family of Chalcidiae. Some of 

 their forms agree in " colorational pattern ;" and this is said 

 by one author to indicate a common origin, and a species 

 will, perhaps, be selected and said to represent the extinct 

 ancestor of both families, and another species will, perhaps, 

 be presumed to be like the original form of all the Chalcidiae, 

 like as a recent insect has been lately asserted to be the 

 counterpart of the earliest form of the insect-race. The 

 Torymidae generally resort to galls ; and Callimome, which 

 probably includes about nine-tenths of the species of the 

 family, appears to be wholly parasitic in gall-insects : its 

 general colour is golden green ; and its chief congi'egation is 

 in oak-galls, and particularly in oak-apples, where several 

 species of it may be found. Some of these species also 

 inhabit smaller galls ; but the oak-apples are the only 

 habitation of one kind, whose especially long oviduct, not 

 exactly adapted for cherry-galls or for currant-galls, enable 

 it to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the oak-apples, 

 which will thus afford matter for useless controversy, as to 

 whether the Callimome came into existence as it now is, or 

 whether its oviduct was successively lengthened by natural 

 selection till it equalled the average half-diameter of the 

 oak-apple. Some species have a blue, a purple, or a copper 

 colour, instead of golden green ; and in a few a red, or 

 luteous, hue occupies the basal part of the abdomen. The 

 oak-gall-making insects are by no means coextensive with 

 oak-woods, but appear to have migrated to them in com- 

 paratively modern times, for there are few, or none, of them 

 in some parts of England and in Ireland, where oak-woods 

 abound. The Callimome species probably followed the gall- 

 flies, and, like them, have yet to be traced through a large 

 part of Europe to East Russia, China, and Japan, and also to 

 Amourland, where the minute Diptera are very like, if not 

 identical with, the British species, and, perhaps, the minute 

 Hymenoptera may be so also. Megastigmus, another genus 

 of Torymidae, also preys on gall-insecls, and will form two 

 groups : of these one is somewhat like Callimome in 

 structure, and partakes of the golden green hue, which 

 distinguishes the latter ; the other group approaches a 

 section of Decatoma in form and in the disposition of 



