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XXIV. On the Ichneumonidous Group Tryphonides schizo- 

 donti, Holmgr., with Descriptions of New Species. 

 By Claude Morley, F.E.S. 



[Read December 6th, 1905.] 



These injurious parasites have upon several occasions 

 come before the notice of our Society. Thomas Desvignes 

 published (Trans. Ent. Soc, 1862, pp. 215-222) descriptions 

 of ten supposedly new species of the genus Bassus, unfor- 

 tunately with no knowledge that Holmgren had previously 

 brought out (Sv. Ak. Handl.,1855, pp.353-37l) an elaborate 

 revision of the group, wherein all such species, indicated 

 by the former, as had been unknown to Gravenhorst (Ichn. 

 Europ., 1829, pp. 310-357) are fully dealt with. Desvignes' 

 names have ever since remained unsynonymized, a mere 

 encumbrance to catalogues, and it is only now that they 

 are for the first time relegated to their true positions. 

 Bridgman also described five supposititiously new species 

 in our Transactions (1882, p. 161 j 1883, p. 170; 1886, 

 pp. 364-5 ; 1887, p. 375), of which there are still three 

 considered to be good. No reliable mention of British 

 representatives of this group was made till the publication 

 in 1856 of Desvignes' "Catalogue of British Ichneumonidse," 

 wherein are recorded eighteen Gravenhorstian and one 

 new species. Of these, B. rujipes is no more than a variety 

 of B. biguttatus, and B. insignis of B. exultans ; the same 

 author's paper of 1862 added four species under preoccupied 

 names, leaving the total at twenty-one kinds. In 1870 

 the Rev. T. A. Marshall's " Ichneumonidum Britannicorum 

 Catalogus " enumerated thirty - nine species, of which 

 thirteen are now regarded as synonyms. Kirchner's 

 "Catalogus Hymenopterorum Europse" of 1867 mentions 

 sixty-two kinds, among which, however, at least twenty- 

 four are synonyms and three of the Fabrician titles apper- 

 tain to other groups. In 1872, the Entomological Society 

 published "A Catalogue of British Hymenoptera," which 

 has ever since, though now sadly obsolete, been the basis- 

 list of entomophagous work in Britain. In it we find 

 TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND. 1905. — PART IV. (DEC.) 



