212 JOURNAL, BOMBA Y NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY^ Vol X. 



A species answering exactly to this description is not uncommon 

 in Tenasserim, and comparing it with Dahlbom's brief description of 

 his Hemipepsis flava (Hym. Eur., i, pp. 123 and 462), it seems to 

 me very close to, if not identical with, that insect, which, I may again 

 note, is in my opinion not the Pompilus (Sphea;) jiavus of Fahricius. 

 If my conjecture is right, and Hemipepsis flava^ Dahlbom:=i¥?/^wm?a 

 intermedia. Smith, then Smith's name must stand for the insect, as 

 under the classification of the Pompilidce proposed by Kohl (Gattungen 

 der Pompiliden in Verh. der K. K. Zool. Bot. Ges. Wien, 1884), 

 and accepted by our greatest living English Hymenopterist, Cameron, 

 the genera Hemipepsis^ Dahlbom, and Priocnemis, SchioedtCj are both 

 placed as groups only of the genus Salius, Fabricius, 



In the Annali del Mus. Civ. di Storia Naturale di Genoa, 2nd series, 

 vol. i (1884), at page 349, Gribodo mentions having received from 

 Burma three specimens of a pompilid which he identifies as Priocnemis 

 fiavus, Fabr. (apud Dahlbom), and describes another species which he 

 names Hemipepsis sycophanta as new. 



With reference to the former, I give a translation of his remarks 

 as they bear on the difficulty of identifying the Sphex flava of 

 Fabricius : — 



'^ 20. Priocnemis flavus, Fabr. 



" Sphex flava, Fabr. Ent. SysL \i, p, 217, n. 80. 



"Pompilus flavus, Fabr. Syst. Piez., p. 197, n. 52. 



" Priocnemis flavus, HhlB. Hym.. Eur. i, p. 457, n. 6. 



" ThrTe females sent by Signer Comotto correspond well with the de- 

 scription (of Priocnemis Jiavus) given by Dahlbom in his Hymenoptera 

 Europea. 



"It is necessary to note, however, that in the same work he mentions 

 a Hemipepsis flava which would appear to be referable to Pompilus 

 • fl^avus of Fabricius. These two species {i. e., Hemipepsis flava and 

 Priocnemis \_Pompilus'\ fiavus) would appear to difier not only in 

 generic characters, such as the number of teeth on the tarsal claws and 

 the neuration of the wing, but also in the colour of the extremity of the 

 abdomen. I know not how to explain this confusion by the learned 

 and accurate author. It may be that it arose from his having found 

 among Fabricius' types allied but distinct species labelled under the 

 Game name, a mistake often made by the earlier Entomologists whose 



