INSECTS 

 HYMENOPTERA 



AnU, Bees, Wasps, Saw-flies, Gall-flies, Ichneumons, &c. 



The classification of this Order has always been a difficult subject owing to the dissimilarity 

 exhibited by the great number of families, &c., into which the vast variety of its species has been 

 divided. This is by no means the place to enter into the subject, of which I shall only say that 

 those kinds noted in SuflFolk have, in the following brief account, been grouped more or less in the 

 three-fold manner propounded by Konow in the Deut. Ent. Zeit. of 1890, and followed by me in 

 the Ichneumonologia Britannica, though the minor groups stand, in some instances, as placed by 

 Ashmead in the Proceedings of the U.S. Nat. Museum of 1 900, which was in the first place a 

 dichotomous system. The three sub-orders of which the whole is composed are : — The Vespoidea, 

 or Aculeata with Chrysididae ; the Ichneumonidea, including all the entomophagous (as well as the 

 phytophagous Cynipidae) kinds ; and the Tenthredonidea, or sawflies and Siricidae. 



VESPOIDEA 



Chrysididae 



Of the twenty-one species recorded from Britain by Morice,^ we find that twelve have been 

 observed in Suffolk. All these have been quite recently noted with the single exception of Cleptes 

 paUidipes, which Paget says used to be common on the Yarmouth sand-hills in 1834 ; Mr. R. C. L. 

 Perkins tells me he has seen it about Brandon, and I have myself found it on flowers by the 

 Gipping in June ; C. nitidula, recorded from Suffolk by Smith,^ has occurred to me at Bramford, 

 Mildenhall, and upon Chaerophyllum in Brantham Dale. We owe the inclusion of Notozus Panzeri 

 and Elampus auratus to Perkins, who noted them in the Breck district in 1899, together with 

 E. aenea, which I have once captured upon tansy in the Bramford marshes in the middle of July. 

 Hedychridium ardens has turned up about Mildenhall, and Morice records the very rare H. integrum 

 from the same locality.' I was so fortunate as to take a couple of the \ovt\y Hedychrum nobile upon 

 the flowers of Heracleum at Bramford in 1 90 1, one with a blue, and one with a green, thorax, and 

 both with brilliant red-gold body. Of the ten British species of Chrysis, we can boast but four, 

 though C. hirsuta and C. viridula, which have been found in Norfolk, probably inhabit the county. 

 C. cyanea may often be seen about the borings of Fossors at Bentley and Assington Woods, 

 Brantham Dale and Tuddenham Fen ; C. ignita, the ruby-tail, is even commoner at Finborough, 

 Ipswich, HoUesley, Bealings, Brantham, Dodnash, and Bentley Woods ; Perkins has found C. Ruddii 

 in the Breck district ; and one or two examples of the rare C. succincta occurred to me on Herac- 

 leum in the Bentley Woods in 1894, though I have not seen it there since that time. So few 

 localities appear to be honoured by the presence of this last species that I may be forgiven for 

 mentioning my capture of an example at Oxshott in Surrey, 10 July 1 90 1. C. flilgida should also 

 occur with us, since it is found in the fens at Wicken, in Cambridgeshire. 



Aculeata 



In treating of this group it will be best to follow the nomenclature generally in vogue among 

 British students at the present time, in which the ants hold first place, followed by the fossors and 

 wasps, the bees being grouped at the end of the sub-order. In the last, we in Suffolk, take pre- 

 eminence in historical interest by virtue of the Rev. William Kirby's fundamental work upon the 

 British species, his Monographic Apum Angliae, which was published in Ipswich in 1 802 ; in it we 

 learn a great deal concerning the local entomologists of that date : — Nicholas Gwyn, M.D., of 

 Ipswich ; Rev. Peter Lathbury, of Woodbridge ; Rev. James Coyte, of Ipswich ; Rev. Revett 

 Sheppard, B.A., curate of Nacton, &c., &c. Many additions, as well as notices of the other three 

 divisions, were brought forward by the Pagets, Curtis, and Parfitt ; Fred Smith in his Catalogues 

 of Fossors, and Bees, and in the Entomological Annual, 1859-68 ; Rothney, Morice, and Tuck in the 

 Entomologist^ s Monthly Magazine, Kirby in Transactions of the Linnean Society, and Ransom in the 

 Entomologist. Bridgman, R. C. L. Perkins, A. PifFard, Harwood, and others have also collected 

 here. Mr. W. H. Tuck published a very full list of the species observed by him about Tostock 

 in the Transactions of the Norfolk Naturalists' Society in 1895 ; and early in 1898 I brought forward 

 a similar one for the Ipswich district in the Entomologist. Mr. Edward Saunders has found many rare 



' Ent. Mo. Mag. 1896, p. 124. ' Ent. Ann. 1862, p. 8$. 



^ Ent. Mo. Mag. 1900, p. 108. 



107 



