1 893-] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 153 



What the exact proportions are I regret I did not ascertain, but 

 the number attacked by parasites was certainly very large. In 

 one piece of wood in which were three short tunnels of two cells 

 each, six cells in all, three cells contained bee-fly pupae, one a 

 Chalcid pupae, and the remaining live bees. Although this is 

 probably above the average, I do not think it is much so. 



Chief among its enemies is Argyratnceba shnson Fab. We 

 found numerous pupae of this bee-fly in the cells and bred the 

 insect. 



It was interesting to observe this pupa, ever restless, with its 

 lings of hooked hairs on its body preventing it going backward 

 as it gradually wriggled itself through the partitions to the ex- 

 ternal opening, where it transformed, leaving its case hanging to 

 the edge of the opening. 



The other parasite found was the Chalcid, Monodontotnerus 

 tnontivagus Ashm., which deposits its eggs to the number of 

 from ten to twenty in each cell. These do not destroy their 

 host until it is about to transform into the pupa state, as is 

 demonstrated by the amount of larval excrement so invariably 

 found in the cell, for the larvae of X. orpifex voids a large 

 quantity of excrement, and while not an isolated example, as I 

 have since discovered, I was not previously aware of bee larvae 

 so doing. In this, as in many other instances, some broods of 

 Monodontotnerus were all males, while other broods were all 

 females. 



NOTES ON THE CYNIPID/E.-I. 



By H, F. Bassett, Waterbury, Conn. 



Even the most careless observer of Nature cannot have failed 

 to notice the swellings and deformations which exist in great 

 variety on the buds-, leaves, flowers, fruits, stems and roots of 

 trees and plants, and, if not already informed, to wonder what 

 causes them. 



We call them galls, and on examination find that most of them 

 are the home of the larvae of insects — larvae developed from 

 eggs laid on the plant by the parent insect before the gall existed. 



The galls are produced by insects, but the interesting question 

 — how? will be considered at another time. 



