186 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
they spin a cocoon, in which they pass the pupa state. The perfect 
insects are generally very active, and fond of the nectar of flowers, 
especially those of the Umbelliferee. They delight in the hottest sun- 
shine, flying and running over sand banks exposed to the mid-day 
sun, and keeping their wings in continual agitation; their sting is 
exceedingly powerful, and in the large exotic species a wound from it 
must be attended with dangerous results. 
We are indebted to Saint Fargeau for the notice of an interesting 
peculiarity in the structure of these insects, indicative, to a certain 
extent, of their economy, which he has described in the Encyclopédie 
Méthodique (tom. x.), in a memoir upon the genus Macromeris, in 
Guérin’s Mag. de Zoologie, and in others upon Gorytes and Crabro, 
in the Annales de la Soc. Ent. de France. Having observed that the 
species which form their own nests are distinguished by having the 
anterior legs, and especially the tarsi, furnished with strong spines, 
and the posterior tibiae denticulated or spined, he correctly considered 
the former of these characters as serving for burrowing, and the 
latter for carrying the prey ; and he was thence induced to regard 
those species which have no spines or ciliz on the anterior and 
posterior legs, as incapable of burrowing and provisioning a nest, and 
consequently as parasites, depositing their eggs in the nests already 
provisioned by other burrowing Hymenoptera.* It does not, however, 
appear to have been yet observed at what particular period (with 
reference to the real inhabitant of the cell) the parasite is hatched ; 
nor whether it merely contents itself with feeding, cuckoo-like, upon 
the food destined for the supply of its fosterer, which is thus starved 
to death; or whether, on the contrary, it devours the latter, although, 
perhaps, it is most natural to suppose that it would do both. An 
entomologist of our country, who has studied the fossorial Hymen- 
optera in the true spirit of scientific inquiry — W. E. Shuckard — 
* St. Fargeau (Hist. Nat. Hym. p. 6.) draws a very proper distinction between 
those parasites which, like the cuckoo, realise the true sense of the word parasite, and 
those which prey upon or in the bodies of other insects, as the Ichneumonidae, &c. 
which are often also called parasites. St. Fargeau proposes to call them ‘ Car- 
nassiers.” This term does not, however, sufficiently indicate them as living within 
the intestines of the victim, upon which they are exercising their cannibal pro- 
pensities. Latreille had indicated this diversity by calling a tribe of parasite bees 
Cuculline ; but, as St. Fargeau observes, the term parasite is the proper name for 
such species, sanctioned by well-known and immemorial use. The Ichneumonide 
have been called “ Cuckoo-flies’? by some English writers, (and in p. 82. I have 
adopted this expression), but it is not sufficiently precise. 
