seeds of Ficus Sijcomorus and Carica. 51 



Coquerel expand into the numerous and powerful tribe of 

 Aculeate Hymenoptera, surpassing other insects in in- 

 tellect, of which the wasp and the bee are the most 

 familiar examples, though a great part control other 

 orders of insects by using them as food for their young" ! 

 A relation with Tijphlojyone and Dichthadia is then 

 suggested, " and thereby the multitudinous tribe of ants, 

 whose economy is so remarkable, emerges from the blind 

 and radical ApocrypUe and SijcocrypUe, the perpetual 

 dwellers in the interior of figs. But the affinity of these 

 two genera to the Chalddm is more evident, and appears 

 by several connecting links in the Agaonidce ; and thus 

 the near relations to the general ancestors of the 

 thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of the Chal- 

 cidice species, the tribe being considered in unity, are 

 cradled in figs " ! ! Believers in the doctrine of evolution 

 may well pray to be defended from such friends as the 

 writer of these passages. 



Mr. Walker has described several new genera of fig- 

 insects from Hindostan, observed in the fruit of Ficus 

 indica by Sir Walter Elliot, one of which is asserted to 

 resemble " some Hymenoptera and Termes, or the white 

 ant, in having a working class as well as males and 

 females." This is probably the species which he next 

 describes under the name of Sycobia hethyloides, giving 

 separate descriptions of the female and "neuter?, 

 worker ? " He gives no description of the male ; and as 

 he was ignorant of the connection between the sexes of 

 the already described species of fig-insects, I apprehend 

 that his neuters or workers are in reality wingless males 

 of a distinct group. 



Sycophaga crassipes. (Plates 11. and III.) 

 Westw., Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii., p. 222. 

 Of this species both sexes have been received in con- 

 siderable numbers from Egypt, infesting the seeds of 

 Ficus Sycomorus, by Sir Sidney S. Saunders. 



Description of the male. — The males are long, narrow, 

 subdepressed insects having much the appearance of a 

 small pale-coloured species of Stapltylinidce without 

 elytra or wings, and with a pair of elongated setose anal 

 appendages. The head is oblong, depressed, with the 

 sides parallel ; the anterior margin of the upper side of 



