38 
the body and legs were fully formed and the wings were also fully 
developed. On breaking the body across, in the interior of the abdo- 
men were found two active living larve, which were entirely indistin- 
guishable from the larva of this species. The specimen was put aside 
to await developments, and the writer has at this time no explanatory 
comments to make.! 
This species has been observed to oviposit in freshly spun cocoons of 
Meteorus and of Amorphota. It has also been seen investigating 
cocoons of the Orgyia, presumably for the purpose of ascertaining 
whether they contained Pimpla cocoons. It oviposits customarily in 
parasite cocoons containing the as yet untransformed larva, although it 
may also lay its eggs in the parasitic larvee which have just issued 
from the host and are about to begin spinning. We have no evidence 
that this species is often a tertiary parasite, but it is quite within the 
-bounds of possibility that it may become so by virtue of ovipositing in 
cocoons of Meteorus, 
Apanteles, or Amor- 
phota which have al- 
\) ready been stung by 
} Spilochaleis debilis. 
Syntomosphyrum esurus 
(hiley). 
This interesting lit- 
tle hyperparasite was 
first reared from the 
cotton worm of the 
South (Aletia. argilla- 
cea) in the course of 
the cotton-worm inves- 
tigation by the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 1878. In Com- 
stock’s report on cotton insects, 1879, and in Bulletin No. 3 of the 
U. 8S. Entomological Commission, it was mentioned under the name 
Cirrospilus esurus. In the Fourth Report of the U. S. Entomological 
Commission it is designated as Tetrastichus esurus. The chrysalids of 
Aletia formed during the latter part of the season were frequently 
found infested with this parasite, each chrysalis nourishing a number. 
The parasite was found to be generally distributed and was reared in 
Texas, Alabama, and Georgia. Adults issued all through the autumn, 
during mild winter weather, and in the spring. It was considered in 
the first two reports published to be a primary parasite. In the fourth 
Fig. 19.—Syntomosphyrum esurus—greatly enlarged (original). 
'The only recorded instance of an at all similar case known to the writer was given 
by Rey. T. A. Marshall in the Entomologists’ Monthly Magazine for December, 1896, 
in which an ichneumonid larva is said to have been found alive in the body of an 
adult Acherontia atropos. The writer’s record (Proc. Entem. Soc. Wash., I, 95) of the 
rearing of Ichneumon instabilis by Scudder from an adult of Gneis semidea was based 
on a wrong reading of a manuscript note of Scudder’s. 
