of new Fig-Insects. 15 



Agaonidce with a felonious impress by placing Coquerel's 

 figures of his " etranges parasites" as emblems and 

 types of the whole, and superadding a tissue of romance 

 on their fabulous affinities. 



More recently Professor Westwood, while censuring 

 Walker's peccadilloes, has reiterated his own pre- 

 dilections in favour of such an alliance, though 

 obviously treating them in the aggregate as one joint- 

 stock company, without contemplating the possibility 

 and propriety of a dissolution of partnership between 

 them ; for, as he has elsewhere remarked, in speaking 

 of the Cynipidce, " it had always appeared to me con- 

 trary to nature that a tribe of vegetable-feeders should be 

 arranged in the midst of parasites " (Mod. Class., vol.ii., 

 p. 132) ; nor can it be conceivable that the essentials of 

 structural qualifications should be fashioned in the same 

 guise as equally adapted for germ-feeders and their 

 antagonists. A specious superficial resemblance may, 

 indeed, sometimes obtain between the aggressor and its 

 victim ; or, in cases of commensal fellowship, such as that 

 of Bombus and PsitJiyrus (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., 1882, 

 p. 307), both being vegetable-feeders, fraternising in the 

 common banquet provided by the former ; but in selecting 

 Callimome, of parasitic habits, as the standard of com- 

 parison in this instance, there would be no raison d'etre 

 for such a similitude, no species of this genus having 

 yet been found in these fig-abodes. 



Nevertheless, Coquerel's figure of his supposed Chalcis 

 (op. cit., pi. x., fig. 4), or that of Stjcophaga by Professor 

 Westwood in our ' Transactions ' (1882, pi. ii., fig. 2), 

 are cited as offering convincing evidence " that the fig 

 species are most nearly related to Ccdlimome " ; while it 

 is averred that " the structure of the antenna? (even to 

 the minute articulations following the 2nd joint), the 

 fusion of the three terminal joints of these organs, the 

 structure of the wings and wing-veins, and the long ex- 

 serted straight ovipositor, sufficiently prove that these 

 insects must be placed in the great family Chaltididce" 

 (ibid, p. 50). 



But, in propounding such a comparison between these 

 parasitic and non-parasitic races, the application of the 

 aforesaid tests to the germ-feeders collectively, or to 

 their two selected representatives respectively, is by no 

 means obvious, especially as regards the character 

 ascribed to the ovipositor ; for, although a newly-deve- 



