No. 22.] 



HYMENOPTERA OF CONNECTICUT. 



649 



body than in the appendages. The writer fully believes that by 

 careful attention to the body characters, and by ignoring, in the 

 primary division, the characters of the appendages, a more natural 

 classification of these insects will be made. 



Not all of the characters given in the following key will apply 

 equally well to insects which do not occur within this region, and 

 this is especially true of exotic genera. The aim of these keys 

 has been to make the characters as simple, yet as positive and 

 definite as possible, so as to enable the beginner who is unfamiliar 

 with the habitus of the insects in question to correctly place his 

 insect in a given subfamily, tribe and genus. For this reason 

 it has been unadvisable to so form the keys that they will include 

 all the genera of the world. At some later time the writer hopes 

 to elaborate the classification here proposed so that it will include 

 the genera of the world. To do this will necessitate the making 

 of a number of additional tribes and perhaps a few subfamilies. 



The nomenclature of the thorax is that given by Snodgrass in 

 his paper entitled " Thorax of the Hymenoptera," published in 

 the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, vol. 39, 

 no. 1774, 1910, pp. 37-91, pi. 1-16. 



I Afe/&/70f{//77 



A7e<5e / c/<5/e/77i//77 

 Fig. IS. Thorax of Chlorion (Ammobid) ichneumoneum. 



In the main, the insects belonging to the superfamily Sphe- 

 coidea could be classed as beneficial, as the great majority of 



