263 



placed in the form of a square; the wings have in a high 

 degree that brilliant violet reflection which is found in many 

 species of this order; the legs are thickly clothed with coarse 

 black hair. The first time I saw it, it w^as fluttering along 

 the ground, half flying, half crawling, carrying the larva of a 

 lamellicorn beetle in its mouth, as big and as long as my little 

 finger, indeed much larger and heavier than itself; I was told 

 that it is in the habit of burying these in the ground. Doubt- 

 less, like many other similar insects, it stupefies the larva, 

 without killing it, and then lays its egg in the hole with it, so 

 that the young, as soon as hatched, finds its food thus ready 

 prepared for it. The insect is somewhat clumsy in its motions, 

 even when unincumbered; sometimes fluttering along the 

 ground, thus, a few inches at a time, so slowly as to be 

 readily caught, at other times flying fairly enough, but with 

 a heavy, lumbering flight. I do not believe that it is poisonous 

 or if it is, that it readily exerts its powers." 



It is probably only exceptionally that the Scolia (better 

 known in our lists as an Elis) would have occasion to bury its 

 prey or to transfer it from place to place. 



Forbes has reported Tiphia burying exposed Lachnosterna 

 larva (Illinois Expt. Sta. Bull. 118^, and 24th Kept. 111. State 

 Ent., p. 159, 1908). 



Notes on the Thynnidae. 



BY .T. C. BRIDW^ELL. 



The Thynnidae are a family of Scolioid wasps presenting 

 several points of great interest. They combine extreme special- 

 ization due to parasitic ha1)its with archaic characters re- 

 tained in but few Aculeate Hymenoptcra. The incomplete 

 fusion of the thorax in both sexes with tlie pronotum and pro- 

 podeum movable upon the mesonotum and metanotum, is a 

 character of extreme interest and so far as I can learn found 

 in no other Aculeates. In many of the species the first cubital 

 cell is distinctly divided so as to form four closed cubital cells. 

 Both these characters seem to me extremely archaic. The 

 males have exceptionally strong powers of flight while the 



Proc. Haw. Ent. Soc. Ill, No. 4, May, 1917. 



