HYMENOPTERA. — CHALCIDID. 165 
Scutelleride. I am acquainted with upwards of twenty species of 
this genus, some of which are the most remarkable insects of the 
order, and of which I am preparing a monograph. 
The genus Agaon Dalm. is remarkable for the large size of the 
flattened head, and the triangularly dilated basal joint of the antenne, 
which are terminated by three thickened joints, forming an elongated 
mass. The collar is greatly elongated and depressed, thus nearly 
approaching the Coleoptera, and rendering the type of this genus (A. 
paradoxum Dalm.) one of the most singular of Hymenopterous 
insects. (MacLeay, in Zool. Journ. No. 18. p. 166.) It inhabits 
Sierra Leone ; and a specimen of it has been recently presented to 
the British Museum. This genus is closely allied to some singular 
insects which are employed in the Levant in the process of caprifica- 
tion; the insects being induced to deposit their eggs in the seed- 
vessels of the wild figs, which, being the earliest, are subsequently 
plucked, and placed in the neighbourhood of those of a later growth 3 
when the flies, escaping from the former, immediately introduce 
themselves, covered as they are with the fecundating powder, into 
the eyes of the latter ; thus impregnating them, and causing them to 
come to perfection earlier than they otherwise would do. Such is the 
account of the process given by some authors; but Lindley (Penny 
Cyclop. vi. 273.), Decandolle (Physiol. Végét. p. 580.), Treviranus (in 
Linnea, 1828, with figure of the insect), and other vegetable physio- 
logists, attribute the earlier ripening of the otherwise later crop, and 
the opportunity thus afforded to the fig-growers in the Levant to 
obtain a double crop in a season, to the well-known fact, that fruit 
bitten by insects ripens sooner than others, the wound (and not an act 
of impregnation) appearing to act as a stimulant to the local action of 
the parenchyma. (See also Linn. Amen. Acad., and Hasselquist, 
Iter in Palestinam.) The species of insect employed for this purpose is 
the Cynips psenes Zinn. (G. Blastophaga Gravenhorst), and Sycomori. 
Ihave also received from Dr. Klug another species “ ex ficubus 
” 
/Egypti,” which I have described in a memoir upon these insects, 
under the name of Sycophaga crassipes. I am also indebted to Dr. 
Klug for a species of larger size, allied to Chalcis, and especially to 
Palmon Dalm., also obtained from Egyptian figs. 
In the works of Réaumur (Mémoires, tom. ii. mém. 11., and tom. iii. 
mém. 12.), De Geer (Mémoires, tom. i. and ii.), Rosel (Abhandl. Ins. 
vol. ii. tab. 3., and vol. iii. tab. 53. and 69.), Frisch, Godart, Christius, 
M 3 
