74 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
very kindly forwarded to me the whole of his collection of 
Meteoride for inspection. 
Ashmead, in his classification of the Ichneumonide,* divides 
his subfamily Meteorine into five genera, restoring Zemiotus 
and Protelus (Forster) which had been rejected, apparently for 
very good reasons, by Marshall. For convenience sake, however, 
I will treat our British representatives as of but one genus, 
Meteorus, Hal.,t as did Morley in his notes.t 
The British species are comparatively few in number, some 
thirty-five or so having been recorded, including two or three 
rather doubtful ones. They are distinguished by having three 
cubital areolets on the fore wings, and, as in the true ichneumons, 
a petiolated abdomen. While usually parasitic on the larve of 
Lepidoptera, some are known to prey on the larve of Coleoptera, 
and Morley has published a record of M. versicolor having been 
bred from the larva of a Tenthredinid. 
From April until late autumn they are to be found on the 
wing, and although I have no knowledge that they ever hibernate 
in the perfect state, it is possible that at least M. jilator, 
which has often been taken in November, and M. melanostictus 
which | have found so late as December 17th, may do so. 
Most of the Meteoride are solitary parasites, though a few 
are social; of the former several weave brown shining cocoons 
which are suspended by a silken thread from leaves or twigs of 
the plant on which the host has fed. This swing rope is 
generally from a half to two inches in length, though I have 
known it to reach eight inches. Marshall writes of these 
cocoons§: ‘‘ The head of the insect is always turned downwards, 
and, as it spins by the mouth, we have to account for the fact 
that somehow it is able to reverse its position in the air, since 
at the moment of its first suspension the head would naturally 
be uppermost; so far as I know, no observation has yet been 
made to explain this circumstance.’ With regard to this, I 
have several times watched the larva of M. pulchricornis emerge 
from its host, and the proceeding is somewhat as follows :— 
The head of the parasite larva is, of course, protruded first, and 
when about half the body is free a pad of silk is spun on the leaf 
or twig on which the host rests; after this the remainder of the 
body is withdrawn, and the parasite lowers itself from the pad 
by a thread of silk, the head being uppermost, as mentioned by 
Marshall. By a severe muscular effort, which is not always 
successful at the first attempt, the apical segment is now brought 
up until it touches the mouth, and apparently the thread is 
grasped between the apical and the adjoining segments,|| the 
* Proc. U. 8. Nat. Mus. vol. xxiii. 1900. + Halliday, Ent. Mag. iii. p. 24. 
{ *Kntomologist,’ 1908, p. 125. § Trans. Ent. Soc. 1887, p. 89. 
|| Berthoumieu describes the pedal processes on the apical segments of 
larvee of Ichneumonide in Ann. Soe. France, 1895. 
