52 Mr. S. S. Saunders's Description of 



At all events, considering the facilities which offer to continental 

 entomologists, of procuring the exposed Polistes nests, furnished 

 with the eggs and larvse of their respective founders in every pro- 

 gressive stage of development, as well as of introducing some of 

 the hexapod parasites for the purpose of watching their operations, 

 it may be assumed that additional links will not long be wanting 

 in order to connect the chain of evidence and complete the magic 

 circle within which the destinies of these singular beings have 

 been mysteriously cast. 



Thus Nature, chary of superfluous endowments, and constantly 

 indulging in freaks of inexhaustible variety, adapts and concen- 

 trates her resources to the ends to be attained, withholding such 

 organs as circumstances may have rendered unavailing, while con- 

 ferring additional perfection upon others, the same design being 

 effectually promoted in either case : so that whereas, on the one 

 hand, among the insects now under consideration the short-lived 

 male is appropriately invested with most inordinately expansive 

 eyes and antennae, wholly unnecessary to the apterous female; 

 the vital energies of the latter are engrossed, on the other hand, 

 by those complex and capacious ovaries which pervade the whole 

 system, suitable for the reception of a multitude of infinitesimal 

 germs,* each constituting the nucleus of a future being, admirably 

 fitted to perform its allotted part, however humble, amid the works 

 of creation : thereby maintaining those due proportions which, 

 regulated by the most elaborate processes of a corrective and 

 compensating tendency, serve to perpetuate the unerring perfec- 

 tion of all : nor among the least curious subjects of inquiry are 

 the laws which govern such divergence of structure and produc- 

 tion of dissimilar conditions from homogeneous molecules. While 

 considering the perplexing obscurity in which the biography of 

 these little parasites has hitherto been involved, it cannot be matter 

 of astonishment that their affinities to other Orders, and conse- 

 quently their fitting position in the natural system, should have 

 given rise to interminable controversy. 



With regard to the genus to which these enemies of the Hylcei 

 may belong, the general structure of the antennae and tarsi might 

 tend to associate them with Xenos; yet, consorting with the Mel- 

 lifera, their habits bring them into close relation with Stylops and 

 Halictophagus ; so that they seem to supply a connecting link 

 between Xenos and Stylops, coinciding with the position which the 

 Hylcei themselves have been considered to occupy between the 

 Vespidce and the Mellifera, — thus constituting a new genus, for 



* Mr. Newport has computed that more than 7000 hexapods were produced 

 by one female. (Loc. cit. p. 341.) 



