OF HARTING. 377 



siderable repairs were in progress, and the workmen 

 engaged in them secured no less than four fine speci- 

 mens of this Ichneumon, in three days, after having 

 allowed several others to escape through the open 

 windows. It is, as we have already stated, quite four 

 inches in length from the tips of the antennae in their 

 natural position to the extremity of the ovipositor, the 

 latter extending an inch-and-three-quarters beyond 

 the abdomen. 



Pimpla manifestator , Pimpla instigator, Pimpla 

 flavicans, and other species of the same genus, we 

 have taken in the timber-yard, on the Park and other 

 wooden fences, and in fields on the blossoms of Um- 

 belliferce. The oviposition of Pimpla has been wit- 

 nessed by more than one entomologist, and the rapid 

 vibration of its antennae while it is in the act of seek- 

 ing the concealed grub to which it is about to commit 

 an egg, particularly described. Some of these grubs 

 reside in deep perforations in wood that are left open at 

 the surface, into each of these openings the ichneumon 

 introduces its antennae for the purpose of exploring it, 

 and the presence or absence of the object of its search 

 is in this way ascertained after a very brief exami- 

 nation. 



Op/iion Inteum, a pretty reddish-yellow fly about 

 three-fourths of an inch long, we have bred from the 

 larva of the Puss Moth, and subsequently caught 

 several other specimens in the fly net. It has a com- 

 pressed sabre-shaped abdomen, and an ovipositor so 

 short that it is incapable of making a deep puncture 

 in depositing its egg, we are not surprised, therefore, 

 to find the latter on the surface of the skin of the 

 larva it attacks, and the grub that proceeds from it, 

 unlike the majority of these parasites, is always exter- 

 nally visible. 



Microgaster glomeratus is the little parasite of which 

 the yellow egg-like cocoons are so often found asso- 

 ciated with the shrivelled skin of a very common 



