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XVII. Farther notice concerning the fig-insects of Ceylon. 

 By J. 0. Westwood, M.A., F.L.S., &c. 



[Read July 4th, 1883.] 



Plate XVI. 



A eenewed examination of some of the numerous species 

 of fig-insects, received from Mr. Stainforth Green and 

 Dr. Tlrwaites, has brought to light some curious and 

 unexpected circumstances relative to the sexes of several 

 of these little creatures which it is necessary for me to 

 bring before the notice of our Society, especially as it 

 enables me to correct an error into which I have in- 

 advertently fallen from too great confidence in the 

 analogy which might be thought to exist between several 

 of these creatures, by which we might predict as to the 

 relative sexes and their consequent specific sexual iden- 

 tification, and at the same time to do justice to a 

 careful observer who I had been led to suppose had 

 erred in the sexual identification of a species from the 

 Levant. 



Sycoscaptella ? 4-setosa, Westwood. 



In my last paper (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., 1883, p. 43) 

 I described, under the name of Sycoscaptella ? 4-setosa, 

 a male insect which my two Ceylonese correspondents 

 had forwarded to me as infesting the seeds of Ficus 

 asperrima, and which appeared to me to be identical 

 with the male insect described and figured by Dr. P. 

 Mayer as the male of Ichneumon ficarius, the female of 

 which, according to Dr. Mayer (represented in his 

 pi. xxv., fig. 5), is furnished with an elongated exserted 

 ovipositor arising near the extremity of a slender tubular 

 joint as long as the remainder of the basal portion of the 

 abdomen ; such being also the structure of the female 

 insect which I figured (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., 1883, 

 PL VI., fig. 37) as the female of Idarnella transiens, of 

 which the winged male is represented by me in fig. 36. 



TR&NS. ENT. SOC, 1883. — PART IV. (NOV.) 2 F 



