466 APPENDIX. 
the anterior tarsi are equally slender in these two species, and only very 
feebly dilated in the male; in the female of A. septentrionalis the 
intermediate legs are a little darker than in the male. The different 
male characters, &c., distinguish it from A. pulicaria, Costa, and A. 
nigripes, Bris., and the non-moniliform antenne from A. rujilabris, Gyll, 
and A. melanostoma, Costa (for these species, see Vol. V. p. 75-77.) 
Oviposition of Metoecus (Rhipiphorus) paradoxus, L.—On page 
82 of Vol. V. will be found an account by Dr. Algernon Chapman of the 
life history, as far as known, of M. paradoxus ; the questions, however, 
of oviposition, of the hatching of the young larva, and its means of 
reaching the wasps’ nest, are left undetermined ; in the Entomologist’s 
Monthly Magazine, however, for January, 1891, Vol. ii. (New Series) 
p. 18, Dr. Chapman again takes up these questions, concerning which 
he has during the past year made several important discoveries. I may 
add that Dr. Chapman sent to me, together with the article, several 
valuable drawings of the eggs as laid, &e. ; his observations are so in- 
teresting that it is best to quote them ‘at length — 
“Failures are often as instructive as successes, and have, in this case, 
led up to the trifling successes I have at length reached, so that I am 
sorry to have kept no record of what I did in the matter at various 
times in recent years. I did, however, obtain examples of the beetle in 
greater or less numbers, and treated them in various ways, placing them 
with earth, sand, various plants, flowers, etc., but always with the 
result that in a few weeks at furthest they died, without either ovi- 
positing or showing any desire to hibernate. I, however, came to, or 
was confirmed in, the conclusion that the eggs were laid in autumn, and 
that the beetles did not hibernate, partly from the death of the beetles, 
partly from the females always being full of eggsfully matured. Ihave 
never succeeded in finding a free larva in the wasp’s nest, whence I con- 
clude that they are introduced one by one, and very quickly bury them- 
selves in a wasp grub; whereas, did the beetle hibernate, the female would 
lay many eggs ina nest, and the young larve would certainly be often met 
with. The female contains so many ova (though not so many as Meloé) 
that it is obvious that the great mortality of the species occurs between 
oviposition and the safe arrival of the larva into the interior of the wasp 
arub, especially as after that date the mortality is mil. If the egg were 
laid in the nest, this would not be so. 
“Thinking out these matters, I this year (1890) enclosed a number of 
freshly disclosed beetles in a sunny place, with portions of dead and 
rotten wood, as well as some flowers. I was lucky enough on two 
occasions to see the beetles in cop., proving certainly that pairing occurs 
in autumn, and afterwards I observed several females, fertile or other- 
wise, searching the crevices of the wood with their extensive ovipositors, 
and at times quietly resting with the ovipositor nearly out of sight, 
