Mr. A. White's Description of a South American Wasp. .^15 



species of siliceous Infusoria have hitherto been met with, 

 namely, Fragilaria rhabdosonia^ Fragilaria striolata ?, Gallio- 

 nella niirichalca, and l^yxidicula prisca. Tliey are very rare, 

 and found only in the vicinity of the beds of flint. 

 [To be coMtiinicd.] 



XXXVI. — Description of a South American Wasp which col- 

 lects Honey. By Mr. Adam White, M.E.S.; an Assistant 

 in the Zoological Department of the Bi-itish Museum. 



[With a Plate.] 



Some of the Wasp tribe of the New World form their nests of 

 a solid and rather thick pasteboard. Such structures have 

 been met with in Pennsylvania*, while they occur frequently 

 in the more tropical parts of South America as far as Buenos 

 Ayrest, and very probably much to the south of that point: 

 in the description of the Isthmus of Darien J, W^afer mentions 

 " the bird's nest bee, the hives of which are black and hard, 

 hanging from the trees like birds' nests." 



The best known is that of the Chartergus nidtdaiis^, which 

 is formed "of a beautifully ])olished white and solid pasteboard, 

 impenetrable by the weather ||." It has been fully described 

 by Reaumur in the sixth volume of his ' Memoires' : in the 

 British Museum there are two specimens of this nest. They 

 are securely attached to the bi'anch of a tree by their upper end, 

 and vary much in length, from a few inches, as in the Museum 

 specimens, to two feet or even more. In the former case they 

 are more or less round and have but four or five combs, while 

 in the latter they are of a long cylindrical shape, and have a 



* Rymsdyk, Mas. Biitannicuin, tab. 1. f. 2. 



-f- Mr. Cuniiiig tells me he has seen specimens there, at least four feet 

 long : in a deserted one a swallow had built her nest. 



X Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (1704), p. 214. 



§ The f'espa nidulans, Fab., is figured by Coquebert (111. Icon. tab. 6. 

 fig. 3.), and Guerin (Iconogr. pi. 72. fig. 7.). In Saint Fargeau's ' Hist. Nat. 

 des Hymenopt.' i. p. 546, it constitutes, along with another black species, 

 the genus Chartergus ; I believe it is the type of Latreille's Ep'ipone. Cuvier 

 (Bull, des Sc.) seems to have first pointed out, in 1797, the error into which 

 Reaumur fell, of considering a Chalcididous parasite found in these nests as 

 being the constructors of them. He regarded it as the Clialcis annulata of 

 Fabricius, an insect found in the pupae of nocturnal Lepidoptera. In 1798 

 Fahricius described the insect as Clialcis conica (Suppl. Ent. Syst. 242), 

 having obtained specimens from the nest : the name he afterwards altered to 

 pyramidea (Syst. Piez. 167), as his former specific name was pre-occupied. 

 Mr. Sells has recently found the parasite in the nest (Journal of the Pro- 

 ceedings of P^ntoniol. Society, ii. p. 30), and Mr. Westwood has published a 

 more accurate figure than that given by Reaumur (Ent. Soc. Trans., ii. 

 pi. 20. f 6.). 



Ii Kirby and Spencc, Intiod. i. p. o06. 



