86 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
be externally prolonged for this purpose ; which external elongation is 
named the oviscapt. ‘The sub-order, Ovitithers, is divided into Phy- 
tiphages (the larve of which feed upon vegetable fluids), and Zoo- 
phages (the larvee of which feed upon other insects, larvae, or spiders ). 
The Phytiphages are divided into either Nidifians (nest-makers), or pa- 
rasites. The Nidifians are divided into the social and solitary species, 
and the social species into those whose communities exist several 
years, and those which are annual. 
The Phytiphagous, nest-making, social, perennial, Ovitithers, com= 
prise the family of the Ants, and the two genera Apis and Melipona. 
The genus Bombus, and the family Polistides (including Vespa, 
Polistes, Epipone, and some new genera of social wasps) are annual. 
So far only have the details of this system been developed. That 
this view of the subject is highly interesting ; and likely to lead, when 
fully worked out, to important results in the classification of the 
order, cannot be doubted. At the same time when we see by this 
mode of arrangement, insects widely separated, which are most in- 
timately allied in general structure, although varying in the form of 
those particular organs which are employed in constructing a nest— 
when, for instance, Psithyrus and Euglossa are removed far from 
Bombus, Odynerus from Polistes, &c., we cannot, as it seems to me, 
but question whether too great an importance has not been bestowed 
upon the “habitudes morales” of these insects. I have, however, 
elsewhere entered more fully into this question (Brié. Cyel. vol. ii. 
p- 874.), and shall only add that, in many cases, as for instance in 
Psithyrus, Nomada, Ceropales, &c., the parasites, as they are not 
quite correctly termed, merely deposit their eggs in the already pro- 
visioned nests of other insects, and that the progeny of the intruder being 
first hatched, consume the food stored up for the real inhabitant. There 
is, therefore, no real difference between the constitution and more im- 
portant organisms of these miscalled parasites and the species upon 
which they are parasitic. It is therefore as absurd to place them 
apart, as it would be to separate the cuckoo, as a distinct primary 
division, from other birds. 
Dr. Dahlbom, a most assiduous Swedish Hymenopterologist, has 
recently published a very interesting sketch of the distribution of this 
order in his Clavis Novi Hymenopterorum Systematis (Lunde, 1835, 
4to.). He considers the fossorial Hymenoptera as the analogues of the 
Mammalian Primates, on account of the very imperfect or undeveloped 
