18 Sir S. S. Saunders' descriptions 



structure is still more anomalous, this genus being con- 

 sidered by Dahlbom as constituting the " connecting 

 link " between the " gall-flies " and the " saw-flies " 

 (ibid, p. 124), where the phytophagous fig-species may 

 not inappropriately intervene as a primary group of the 

 Cynipidee. The inferences to be deduced from such 

 modifications, where corresponding habits disclose asso- 

 ciating links, are well exemplified in the reasons adduced 

 by Professor Westwood for the transfer of the Urocerida 

 from the position assigned to them by St. Fargeau; his 

 nomenclature and arrangement being repudiated " be- 

 cause neither appear to have a foundation in nature, the 

 precise construction of the ovipositor in his different 

 groups not having been correctly ascertained, whilst we 

 have already seen that there are no grounds for the in- 

 sertion of the Uroceridce amongst the parasitic insects" (ibid, 

 p. 123). Thus modifications in structure, implying 

 corresponding differences in economy, must not be held 

 to supersede all considerations reposing on physiological 

 facts. In like manner the ovipositor in these germ- 

 consumers was well known to Linnaeus when he described 

 his Cynips Psenes as " aculeo exserto, sed debili, laxo, ut 

 vix videatur Cynips esse " ; yet he had no scruple to 

 associate this and Hasselquist's other fig-species with the 

 Cynipidee. Moreover, as compared with Callimome 

 (Curtis, loc. cit., pi. 552), the organisation of the terebra 

 in these fig-devotees of the germ-feeding race is essen- 

 tially different, as emanating from a depressed valve at 

 the base of the 5th segment, thus described by Graven- 

 horst in Blastophaga : " Terebra setiformi, vaginis graci- 

 liore, situ certo, cum nempe infra ventrem reclinatur, e val- 

 vida ad basin segmenti quinti porrecta" (loc. cit., p. 29). 

 This valve is shown in my figures 15, 29, and 46. 



In fact we are confronted with anomalous ovipositors 

 in all the intervening links between the Tenthredinida 

 and the Cynipidee ; but, in these germ-nurtured fig- 

 voluptuaries, such modifications are not unfrequently 

 emphasised to a remarkable extent in their buccal organs, 

 by those peculiar serrate processes, of marvellous devices, 

 which many of them exhibit as mandibular appendages, 

 having no parallel elsewhere ; while, from their inherited 

 instincts, the same ruling must apply to them as to the 

 Uroceridce — that there are no grounds for the insertion of 

 these vegetarians amongst the parasitic insects. Never- 

 theless, in comprising the Cynipidee among the " Ento- 

 mophaga," the same exemption from unnatural associates 



