138 Psyche [Oct.-Dec. 



During the entire summer we sought carefully for additional 

 nests of dkiboUca infested with arctica, hut none was found. At 

 Colebrook the males of arctica were not uncommon on the flowers 

 of Spriwa salicifolia and Padinaca sativa, usually during the morn- 

 ing or late afternoon hours in three different localities where in- 

 fested colonies of diaholica must have been present hut could not 

 be located. The first of these males was captured as early as 

 July 16, and a few were taken every few days throughout the 

 remainder of July and the first two weeks of August. Thereafter 

 the species seemed to have disappeared, though in previous years 

 a few males and females were captured as late as September 1- 

 ISTo males of V. consohrina were seen on flowers till July 31, and 

 virgin females and males of diabolica did not appear till later 

 (August 20 to 22), and soon afterwards disappeared. It would 

 seem, therefore, that the early emergence and long flying period of 

 the arctica males is an adaptation to insuring the fecundation of 

 the much less numerous females, an adaptation the more necessary 

 because the species is very rare most summers, when the host spe- 

 cies, too, is less abundant. 



Tlie foregoing observations have an important bearing on what 

 has been learned concerning F. austriaca. This wasp, which also 

 lacks a worker caste, has long been known in Europe, where it 

 ranges from Ireland to Eussia, with a marked preference for 

 mountains up to an altitude of 5500 feet. It seems also to occur irj 

 Palearctic Asia. Eecently Bequaert (1916) took two females of 

 austriaca at Fort Lee, Kew Jersey, opposite New York City, and 

 recorded a specimen taken l)y Prof. J. S. Hine on the same day 

 (July 16) on Staten Island. More recently (1918) Sladen has 

 taken austriaca at Ottawa and Clielsea, Quebec (mid-June), and 

 at Winnipeg and Kaslo, British Columbia (mid- July), and Be- 

 quaert (1920), cites specimens from Savonoski, Alaska (July), 

 ]\rt. Hood, Oregon (G. P. Engelhardt Coll.), and Beaver Mouth, 

 Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia (J. C. Bradley Coll.). In 

 Europe this wasp has been taken in the nests of V. rufa and has 

 been regarded as a parasite of the latter by Morawitz (1864), 

 Schraiedeknecht (1881), Eobson (1898), Saunders (1903), Sharp 

 (1893), Perez (1910), and Bequaert. Carpented and Pack-Beres-. 

 ford (1903) have published a careful account of an austriaca-rufa 



