- 
( cliv ) 
bling the supposed independent ovipositor. An _ ovipositor 
other than the scalpellum does not exist, and I cannot conceive 
what the observer can have mistaken for one. 
3.—Burmeister’s well-known “ Manual” (p. 197 of Shuckard’s 
Translation) makes statements not unlike those just discussed. 
“The terebra,” he says, “‘does not pierce firm substances, but 
merely guides the eggs into already existing cavities ; but the 
aculeus forms the cavity itself for the egg, pierces into bodies 
not firmer than itself, and as a defensive instrument it wounds 
very severely.” On this I would remark, in addition to 
what has been said above, that it is exceptional among the 
Hymenoptera to use the aculeus as a defensive weapon ; and 
that such as habitually so use it, viz. the social Bees and 
Wasps, do not also employ it to form cavities for receiving 
eggs. 
4.—The ambitious, and in many respects very excellent, 
monograph of Lacaze-Duthiers inquires, with much detail and 
many figures, into the morphology and homologies of the 
terebra and its parts; but the author can hardly have 
witnessed its actual operations. For he insists that the 
blades commonly called the saws must obviously, like an 
ordinary saw, be applied to the substances they have to sever 
edgewise and not like an “aculeus” point first. ‘The instru- 
ment, he says in so many words, “ does not make a hole but a 
slit.” I hope I have convinced you that it does both ! 
5.—Lastly, in the 8th edition of a well-known work by the 
justly celebrated American Entomologist and late Honorary 
Fellow of our own Society, Professor Packard, I find an 
account, in which, taking it simply as it stands, I can 
positively discover no sort of meaning whatever. Its words 
are these— 
The ovipositor or saw consists of two lamellae the lower edge of 
which is toothed and fits in a groove in the under side of the upper 
one, which is toothed above, both protected by the usual sheath-like 
stylets. 
How two lamellae can have two edges, a lower and an upper 
one, which are fitted together in a groove ; and what is meant 
by the under side of an upper edge ; and how a tool could act 
when its toothed edge was enclosed within a portion of itself, 
