30 Prof. Westwood's further descriptions of 



on Chalcidise,' or that he had forgotten his descriptions 

 of Idames transiens, stabilis, and Pteromaloides, which 

 had appeared in that work ; whilst, had he previously 

 written these ' Entomologist ' descriptions, it is curious 

 that he did not allude to them in his ' Notes.' No 

 collection is named in which the types of these de- 

 scriptions exist, nor is any notice given by whom they 

 were collected, and I am informed that the box in 

 which they were placed has disappeared. 



Another memoir on fig-insects, by Dr. Paul Mayer, has 

 just appeared in the ' Mittheilungen a. d. Zoolog. Station 

 zu Neapel, 1882,' Heft iv. It extends to forty large 

 8vo pages, and is accompanied by several plates and 

 woodcuts ; and reference to a memoir by H. Graf zu 

 Solms-Laubach, entitled " Die Herkunft, Domestication 

 und Verbreitung des gewohnlichen Feigenbaums (Ficus 

 carica, L.)," published in the ' Abhandlungen Kon. 

 Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen,' 1882, 

 106 pp. In this memoir (which well deserves transla- 

 tion) Dr. Mayer has dwelt at length on the physiological 

 effect of the presence of the fig-insects in causing capri 

 fication, and has given a list of the twenty-two different 

 species of Ficus and Sycomorus from various parts of 

 the world which have afforded species of these fig- 

 insects. 



Dr. Mayer's memoir is terminated by extended de- 

 scriptions and figures of the details of both sexes of 

 Blastophaga grossorum, Grav. ; of the male of Sycophaga 

 Sycomori (S. crassipes, Westw., olim) ; and of two other 

 insects which (evidently deceived by the analogy with 

 the sexual differences, of Blastophaga grossorum) he de- 

 scribes (pp. 554 and 564) as the two sexes of one species 

 under the provisional name of Ichneumon ficarius, Cavo- 

 lini. One of these two insects is a female with a very 

 long exserted ovipositor, and is either identical with 

 or congeneric with Walker's Idames transiens ; and 

 the other, a supposed male, is a subapterous insect 

 which, judging from the figures, seems to me to be 

 identical with the female of Sycoscapter insignis described 

 below. 



