176 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
79. 8. represents, still more highly magnified, the appearance of the 
last-mentioned organ, exhibiting, at c, the deflexed sides of the chan- 
nelled ovipositor, and at ¢ ce, the two spiculz enclosed in the canal on 
its under side; whilst jig. 79. 9. shows all these parts extended, and 
distinguished by the same letters as have been employed in the 
explanation of the construction of the ovipositor in the preceding 
families. The composition of the ovipositor itself has not been at- 
tempted by Latreille and Curtis; and the account given of its con- 
struction in Cleptes (namely, an aculeus, with one lanceolate valve 
beneath), by the latter author, must be erroneous. De Geer more 
minutely investigated its structure (Mém. tom. ii. pl. 28. f. 19, 20, 21., 
and pl. 29. f. 1, 2.), and proved its analogy with the true sting, which 
he figured, with its details, in the former of these plates. 
These insects, although but of small or moderate size, are amongst the 
most splendid of our native species, being adorned with brilliant metallic 
tints, blue and green being the usual colours of the head and thorax, and 
fiery copper-colour, or ruby, that of the abdomen*: hence they have 
been called the humming birds amongst insects. They may be observed 
during the hottest sunshine flying and running with great vivacity 
over walls, palings, sand-banks, and occasionally upon flowers, especially 
of the Umbelliferee (Kirby, Linn. Trans. vol. iv. p. 196. note), and 
upon the leaves of trees. They are constantly in motion, keeping their 
antenne in perpetual vibration, varying from tapping the surface of the 
object on which they are placed, to an almost imperceptible tremor. 
In their economy there is some reason to believe that these insects 
differ from the preceding, and that they more especially deserve the 
name of cuckoo-flies; the females not depositing their eggs in the bodies 
of other insects, but taking an opportunity to deposit them in the nests 
of different bees, and other fossorial Hymenoptera, during the period 
when the latter are provisioning their nests for the support of their 
own progeny, which is thus starved by the intruder being first hatched 
and devouring the supply of food. Thus I have constantly found our 
largest British species in company with Odynerus antilope (see my 
article on the habits of this insect, in the Trans. Ent. Soc. vol. i.), of 
which it is doubtless the parasite, but which does not appear to offer 
the slightest molestation, deterred, possibly, as Latreille suggests, by 
* A piseatorial friend tells me that these insects are famous baits for fishing ; their 
colours, perhaps, being attractive to the fish. 
