154 NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF INSECTS. 



their strong affinity to the more perfect and social Hy- 

 menoptera, and the impossibility of discovering the least 

 relation between them and the Tenthredines, has induced 

 us to doubt the correctness of this opinion, and to substi- 

 tute, for the present, the Cynipsides including the Chalci- 

 dites. The singular prolongation of the scutellum in some 

 of these insects, which Latreille very justly compares to 

 Scutellera, gives them, at first sight, a closer resemblance 

 to Coleoptera than any other insects of this order yet dis- 

 covered : this, at least, we can say, — that two or three 

 species found by us in Brazil have this aspect so strongly, 

 that we mistook them, at first, for MordellcB. The pe- 

 culiarity also mentioned by Latreille, of most of the 

 Fabrician Chalcididce enjoying the faculty of leaping, is 

 another point wherein they resemble the most aberrant 

 tribe of the Coleoptera, no less than the Syphonostoma, 

 or fleas, the acknowledged representatives of the beetles 

 among apterous insects. Families, again, in which me- 

 tallic colours run through the great majority of the 

 species, are invariably the most aberrant in their own 

 circles. We find this true in the humming birds, the 

 tanagrine genus Agla'ia, the. metallic pheasants of India, 

 and the prismatic mouse of the same region. It is again 

 seen in the Chrysomelidce in the circle of the Coleoptera, 

 in the Buprestidce, in that of the Lamellicornes, and in 

 the Curculionidce among the Caprkornes. However 

 unprepared we may therefore be, to offer any opinion 

 worth adopting on the rank of the Chalcidites and of the 

 ants, we have not a doubt that both they and the genus 

 Chrysis, together with the Mutillidce, are all repre- 

 sentatives of the Coleoptera, wherever their actual lo- 

 cation in nature may be. As for the latter group, — 

 the Mutillidce, — we look upon them as more related to 

 the true ants by analogy than by affinity: they agree only 

 in being apterous, — a circumstance so common in widely 

 different groups of this order, that it is by no means 

 sufficient to constitute an affinity. The analogies of 

 the saw flies (^Tenthredines) to the aberrant Neuroptera, 

 (or the Phryyanidce), although not so apparent, perhaps. 



