78 Mr. Westwood on the Habits of Odynervs Aiitilope. 



characters of the insect which appears to be synonymous with it ; but 

 as I cannot sufficiently decipher his German description, I cannot 

 be positive that the tw^o insects are identical. Ochsenheimer* says : 

 "Ps. alis angustis hyalinis, corpore atro hirsuto, antennis plumosis." 



Upon this last character there exists considerable doubt ; and what 

 may be the real colour of the body it is impossible to state, but the 

 wings appear to agree. Of Ochsenheimer's insect (which appears 

 to have been taken in Portugal,) I have not seen a specimen ; the 

 English one was found by Mr. Bolton in Yorkshire upwards of fifty 

 years since. 



It may be added, that the first notice of this insect was given by 

 Mr. Haworth in his Prodromus Lepidopterormn Britannicorum, p. 35. 

 as a new species, under the name of Tinea fenestrella, associated 

 with the species of the genus Fmnea ; but at the period of the publi- 

 cation of that work (1802), Psyche fusca, its nearest ally, had not 

 been detected in Britain. 



XVIII. Notice of the Habits of Odynerus Antilope. By 

 J. O. Westwood, F.L.S., Sfc. 



[Read June 2, 1834.] 



I BEG leave to oifer to the Entomological Society a notice of some 

 facts w^hich I have recently observed relative to the habits of Ody- 

 nerus Antilope, and which seem to present another exception to the 

 theory of M. St. Fargeau respecting the oeconomy of the fossorial 

 Hymenoptera, as w^ell as to throw some light upon the mode of em- 

 ployment of the legs in the construction and provisioning of the 

 nest, both which subjects, it will be remembered, have already upon 

 several occasions occupied the attention of the Society. 



It has been long known that the species of Odynerus form their 

 nests in the old mortar of walls or in sand-banks, and that each of 

 these nests is provisioned wuth about ten or twelve caterpillars, 

 Avhich are arranged in a spiral direction. 



Some exceptions as to situation are mentioned in Curtis's Brit. 

 Ent., and in the Mag. Nat. History. 



Yesterday morning, 31st May, 1834, in Avalking at the side of an 

 old brick wall, exposed to the sun, I noticed several specimens of 



* Vol. iii. p. 176. 



