HABITS OF THE THYXNTJS. 



423 



pupae of certain moths. One species, Thynnus Wallisii, is 

 most curiously coloured. The male is plain yellow-brown, but 

 the female is covered with a tracery of fine black lines exactly 

 resembling that heraldic bearing termed " vairy." 



To judge from analogy, the sting of the female Thynnus must 

 be really terrible. There is a little British species allied to 

 Thynnus, and known as Metkoca ichneumonoides. Mr. F. Smith 

 has described and figured this insect in his " British Fossorial 

 Hymenoptera," in which a minute and detailed description may 

 be seen. He tells me that he has taken both sexes on the sands 

 in several parts of our southern shores. It prefers the hottest 

 part of the day for action, and the female runs about rapidly 

 over the sands in a very ant-like fashion. If incautiously 

 handled she uses her sting, and the effect has been likened to a 

 red-hot needle piercing the 



hand. So, if so tiny an in- 

 sect can inflict real pain, the 

 sting of the comparatively 

 gigantic must be even danger- 

 ous to life. 



Mr. Westwood says that 

 when touched or alarmed, the 

 Methoca acts after the fashion 

 of the Chrysis, and rolls itself 

 into a ball, the abdomen being 

 bent upon the thorax, and the 

 head drooping downwards. 

 Here, again, the two sexes are 

 so different that they have been described as separate insects, 

 the female retaining the name of Methoca, and the male being 

 placed in the genus Tengyra, one of the Scolia group. It is 

 no wonder that such a mistake should have been made, for 

 no two insects can seem more dissimilar than the wingless 

 and ant-like female which runs about on the sand, and the 

 male which flies above her in the air. The female has short 

 antennse, a pear-shaped abdomen, and the thorax formed into 

 three knots, just as if strings had been tied round it when 

 soft. The male, on the contrary, is slender, long-bodied, has 

 very long antennre, and his thorax is continuous and not 

 broken up into knots. 



I- h;. 214. — Tbynmis Aushalis. female. 

 (Black and yellow.) 



