390 Mr. Claude Corley on the HhoiKilosoniidae. 
satisfied that it has no place among the Aculeates; but 
Haliday wrote, “ I consider it a Sphegid, with smooth 
legs, Pelopaens” and he was rarely incorrect: in 1900, 
Ashmead (Canadian Entom., xxxii, p. 148; cf. also Proc. 
Ent. Soc, Wash., iii, p. 303) erected a family for the sole 
reception of this genus of a single species and placed it 
between the Cosilidae axxd Thynnidae, with neither of which 
it is at all closely connected. Sharp (Camb. Nat. Hist., ii, 
101) “can expre.ss no opinion as to whether it is allied 
to the Scoliidae or to the Bphegidae * ” ; he takes it for 
granted that it should stand near one or the other, and in 
that case the lobation of the hindwings renders it closer to 
the former. 
The facts of the antennae being thirteen-jointed in ^ 
and twelve-jointed in and of the dorsal abdominal seg¬ 
ments being seven in $ and six in certainly prove it 
to be Aculeate ; though the neuration is that of the 
ICHNEUMONIDAE (probably most closely resembling that 
of Forster’s genus Barylypa among the Anomalides), with 
a few additional nervures. 
Granting it an Aculeate, related to the Scoliidae, we can 
do little more than say with Fred Smith, “Place Sibyllina 
in any group of the Hymenoptera, and it will, as it were, 
stand alone; it has little affinity that I can discover, 
certainly it has no strong affinity, with any other known 
insect.” 
Have we here the “ ancestral type ” of Hymenopteron, 
emitting Fossores according to its body and Parasites 
according to its wings ? Or more probably this anomalous 
combination is brought about by some process (though 
hardly cross-breeding of Pelopaeus and Aiiomalon]) of 
very remarkable specialisation. 
* I am afraid the name Splierddae is too well established to ever 
be universally corrected now-a-days. In May 1900, the late Eev. 
T. A. Marshall wrote to me, “ I enter a protest against the spelling 
of the Ichneumon genus Sphegophaija. 2<?)7j|, genitive 
“ wasp ” in Greek, should be rendered in our nomenclature Sphex, 
isphecis, etc., as the older authors well knew. The mistake of sphegis, 
Sphegidae, is a new corruption, which, if sanctioned, will be forth¬ 
with adopted by everybody. I fear it is almost too late now. Such 
blunders are trifling, of course, but I know no reason why a mistake 
of spelling should be allowed in Greek and Latin, when it would be 
hooted in English.” 
Monk Soham House, 
Suffolk, 
March 1910. 
