On the Relations between Wasps and lllii])ipliori. 83 



defined, canalicular system, as one of Dr. J. E. (J ray's family 

 of Oliuniadie. 



The yellow colour and dimpled appearance, respectively, 

 presented by the coriaceous envelope of the gemmule is owing 

 to its being composed of minute sj)herical cellules, about 

 1-3 700th of an inch in diameter, situated about the same distance 

 from each other, but united together, in a stellate form, by 

 intervening straight tubules, five or six in number, radiating 

 from each cellule, similar to what is seen in the microscopic 

 cell-structure of fossil Foraminifera, ex. gr. Orhitoides ; and it 

 is in the intervals between the cellules and radii that the 

 dimples occur. 



XI. — Ii(^2>ly to Mr. Frederick Smith on the Relations between 

 Wasps and Rhipiphori. By AndkeW Mukhay, F.L.S. 



I WAS much pleased to read my friend Mr. Frederick Smith's 

 commentary on my paper about Wasps and Rhipiphori in the 

 last Number of the ' Annals,' although I see that I have not 

 succeeded in converting him to my views. There is nothing 

 like the collision of opposing minds for eliciting truth ; and it 

 is always pleasant to find another taking interest in a subject 

 which has excited our own, especially when it is so fairly and 

 honestly handled as every subject is on which Mr. Smith ex- 

 presses his opinion. 



AVith the help of that fairness, I do not yet despair of 

 bringing him round ; and for that purpose, as well as for the 

 sake of those who niay have been convinced by his arguments 

 or led away by the authority of his opinion on a subject on 

 which he is facile ^;/-<'«ce/w, I shall ask him and them again 

 to weigh the difficulties which his view of the question pre- 

 sents. In my last paper I was more concerned in stating my 

 own obsen^ations than in controverting the opinions of others ; 

 but I shall now pass in review the whole facts that we know 

 on the subject, either from Mr. Smith, Mr. Stone, myself, or 

 others, and endeavour to see with which explanation they best 

 agree. 



Mr. Smith agrees with me that the Rhijiiphorus lays its 

 eggs in the cells of the wasps, and that in the instances in 

 which I saw two eggs in one cell, one of them must have been 

 a Rhipipdiorus ; that gives us the form of its ^.^ii; and its posi- 

 tion and mode of attachment in the cell (which are all iden- 

 tical with those of the wasp's). When the wasp's cg\^ is exa- 

 mined in its early stage, it is seen to be simply an oval cg^, 

 with a smooth semitranslucent shell, through which, at a later 



