60 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Again, as analogous with Mr. Wheeler's instances of bright 

 coloration in the lower Misox Valley, last year I took three 

 examples in the Val Maggia which are so fine that on showing 

 them to Mr. Jones, when we met at Digne, he exclaimed, " Why, 

 they are almost as good as mehadiensis." These are not only 

 as strongly marked and as brilliant in colouring, especially on 

 the under side, as var. mehadiensis, but they are also large. 

 The smallest race of athalia that I have noticed is a series I took 

 at the beginning of August, 1904, on Monte Bre. Does this 

 indicate a partial second brood ? Here we have males and 

 females averaging 33 and 39 mm. respectively. Many from 

 Ecclepens, Bex and Caux run decidedly small, all of which seems 

 to show, for I have not quoted isolated individuals, that the 

 species varies in size equally on both sides of the Alps. 



THE FOSSIL CEABEONID^. 

 By T. D. a. Cockerell. 



It is evident that the fossorial wasps are of great antiquity. 

 Crabro, with its curiously reduced venation, cannot be regarded 

 as a primitive member of the series, and yet we have positive 

 evidence that it has remained unchanged, save for the develop- 

 ment of minor groups, and of course species, since the middle 

 of the Tertiary period at least. The oldest known species come 

 from Baltic amber, of Lower Oligocene age. I have recently 

 (Mitt. Geol.-Pal. Inst. Univ. Konigsberg, 1909) described two 

 of these amber species, C. succhialis, about 5 mm. long, and 

 C. tornqiiisti, about twice as large. It cannot be said that they 

 present any feature which would be considered remarkable 

 in a living species. From the Miocene shales of Florissant, 

 Colorado, I have described C. (Tracheliodes) mortuellus (Bull. 

 Mus. Comp, Zool., 1906), a species about 7 mm. long, of quite 

 ordinary type. A second Florissant species may be described 

 as follows : — 



Crabro longavus, n. sp. 



About 10 mm. long, or a little less (head and thorax about 4 J, 

 abdomen about 5), robust, black, the tegument of abdomen nearly all 

 destroyed, so that it cannot be determined whether there were pale 

 spots'; thorax densely and minutely punctured ; abdomen sessile, the 

 first segment convex, the suture between it and the second depressed; 

 wings slightly reddened ; venation normal ; the following measure- 

 ments are in microns : length of marginal cell 1649, its depth at 

 middle 425, its truncate end 187 ; depth of stigma 204 ; submarginal 

 cell on marginal 816 ; end of submarginal cell to end of marginal 

 (lower corner of truncation) 850 ; upper end of basal nervure to base 

 of marginal cell 900; basal nervure on submarginal cell 170, on dis- 

 coidal 1020 ; basal nervure meeting transverso-medial, or almost 

 doing so. 



