THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



^93 



SYNONYMS OF PARASITES 

 CORRECTED. 



MISTAKES 



Mr. L. O. Howard, of the Entomological 

 Division of the Department of Agriculture, 

 who, we are glad to learn, is making a 

 specialty of the Chakididce, gives reasons* 

 for considering Antigaster Walsh synony- 

 mous with Eiipelnms Dalm. He states that 

 there were "no grounds for the founding 

 of the genus Antigaster" a statement which 

 we believe is hardly justified. Westwood 

 characterizes ^/^;!'^/ot«^ as having 13-iointed 

 antennae with the club ovate. AValker, in 

 1869, recognized Antigaster, stating that 

 it was allied to Enpebnus and Notanistis, 

 and, in 1872, gave as the distinguishing 

 character of Eiipelnms " the middle tarsi 

 with bristles," and the genus is figured with 

 such bristles by Snellen von Vollenhoven. 

 Antigaster is sufficiently distinguished in 

 the ? by its lo-jointed antennaef with 

 the club obliquely truncate from be- 

 neath ; by the basal joint of middle tarsi 

 being non-bristled, but widely compressed 

 and finely dentate beneath ; by the abdo- 

 men strongly broadening behind, and by 

 some of the 5 characters. 



The minuter parasites belonging to the 

 Chalcididcs, Proctotrupidce and Cynipidce, 

 in their broader sense, are most interesting 

 subjects of study, and we confidently ex- 

 pect important and valuable results from 

 special study of them in this country, such 

 as Mr. Howard intends to give ; and this 

 reminds us that, from a study o|* Forster's 

 paper on the Cynipidae, which we have 

 been able to make through the courtesy of 

 Mr. Wm. H. Patton, we believe that our 

 genus Didictyum, characterized on page 52 

 of this volume, is synonymous with Fors- 

 ter's Hexaplasta and must therefore sink. 

 Authors have given us, so far, no characters 

 which will enable us to properly place some 

 of the osculant forms between the three fam- 

 ilies here mentioned, and it is questionable 

 whether any characterizations can be for- 

 mulated which will cover all requirements. 



* Canadian Entomologist, October, 1880, p. 209. 



t The club cannot, in any justness, be separated into 3 joints, 

 and it requires a stretch of the imagination to make out an 

 additional one between joints 2 and 3, which is the only way to 

 account for Westwood's diagnosis, supposing that the antenna 

 in Eupelnius has the same number of joints as in A ntigaster. 



This little parasite will therefore, in future, 

 be known 2,% Hexaplasta 5/^2«^ (Riley). It 

 is, by the way, not a parasite of Aletia as 

 we had been led to believe from the state- 

 ment of Prof. Comstock who referred it to 

 us, as such, but, as we have had good evi- 

 dence the present year, a parasite oi Phora 

 aletiic. The parasite is not gregarious, but 

 singly infests. the Phora, going through its 

 transformations in the pupa of its victim 

 and issuing from a hole eaten in the upper 

 anterior part thereof. 



" A MYSTERY IN REFERENCE TO PRONUBA 

 YUCCASELLA." 



The above is the title of a communica- 

 tion by Dr. H. A. Hagen in the July num- 

 ber of our contemporary the Canadian En- 

 tomologist. Dr. Hagen had been breeding 

 Prodoxus decipiens, described in our June 

 number, and mistook it for Pronuba yucca- 

 sella. He mentions having carefully com- 

 pared his moths with typical specimens 

 and that his comparison left no doubt that 

 those bred from the stem were P. yiiccasella. 

 In an addendum to the article, written af- 

 ter Dr. Hagen had seen our remarks on p. 

 142 of this magazine, he further declares 

 that the basal joint of the maxillary pal- 

 pus in his two females " is produced into a 

 spinous tentacle just as in Pronuba." This 

 statement was such a surprise to us that 

 we wrote to the Canadian Entomologist 

 giving our reasons for believing that 

 Dr. Hagen must have been mistaken. In 

 August when we met Dr. Hagen at Cam- 

 bridge he at once confessed his mistake 

 and admitted that we were right, though 

 he gave no explanation of the way the 

 error was made. In his interesting re- 

 marks on the anatomy of Prodoxus no re- 

 ference was made to the former error, ex- 

 cept so far as it was implied in the accep- 

 tance of our species. As no correction of 

 the error has yet appeared in the columns of 

 our contemporary and as the original state- 

 ment of Dr. Hagen was so circumspect 

 and emphatic we cannot let the matter 

 drop, but are constrained to thus insist on 

 the correctness of our own observations 



