10 [January, 



ACULEATE RYMENOPTERA IN 1892. 

 BY THE EEV. F. B. MOBICE, M.A., P.E.S. 



I have had opportunities this year of collecting Aculeate Hy- 

 menoptera in various parts of England. The season appears to have 

 been a good one in most branches of entomology : i hardly think it 

 has been so for my own favourites, the Aculeates. i have scarcely 

 seen them anyv^^here in abundance, and several familiar kinds have not 

 presented themselves at all ; still, 1 have made some captures and 

 observations, which may be worth putting on record. 



JPassaloecus monilicornis. — This seems to be a rare and local species. Eor the 

 last three years I have been taking it, sparingly, in Rugby. This year I obtained 

 both sexes there in July ; and in one case I caught the $ in the act of emerging 

 from a hole under the bark of a live apple tree in a nursery garden. In the same 

 garden, about the end of July, I was lucky enough to capture the rare Nysson 

 trimaculaLus, and I was also glad to meet with Hoplisus quadrifa.iciatus, both sexes, 

 but especially the females, in considerable numbers, Hying and running over a large 

 strawberry bed ; they seemed to be preying on the " cuckoo-spit," or some insect of 

 that kind. I have seen the males at Rugby in previous years running over masses 

 of gout weed {Mgopodium podagraria) in ditches, but had never been able to find 

 their females. 



Crabro capitosus occui's now and then at Rugby, and I have taken some speci- 

 mens this year. It is a rare species, a good deal like a small leucostomus. I find it 

 about the end of June in gate posts and palings. 



Spilomena troglodytes has occurred this year at Rugby, also burrowing in posts. 

 So, too, in much greater numbers has Stigmus pendulus. 1 have found females of 

 this species strangely infested with Acari. In one case the abdomen was entirely 

 covered with these parasites, so that, to the naked eye, it appeared to be not black 

 but testaceous all over ; in another specimen Acari were hanging to the antennije, 

 and remaiiaed there after the insect had passed through the cyanide bottle. 



Fseii paliipes is common in most places, and this year, for the first time, I have 

 found it common at Rugby. It has also, this year, had a very long season at Rugby, 

 unless it is double brooded, for I found it there as early as May and as late as the 

 26th of September. 



Both this year and last I have seen at Rugby Frosopis communis issuing from 

 holes in wooden palings. This, I believe, is a somewhat unusual observation, so it 

 may be worth recording. I have also seen a number of workers of Bombus muscorum 

 going into and out of an apparently deep hole in the earth at the side of a large 

 ditch. Unfortunately it did not occur to me to verify the observation by digging, 

 but I feel sure that in this case the species had deviated from its usual habit of 

 surface building. Similar observations have occasionally been made about other 

 species, but I know of none such in the case of muscorum, which has always, been 

 considered a most regular surface builder. 



I spent the first fortnight or so of April at Hastings. Nomada borealis $ was 

 fairly common in its usual haunts there ; the males were all but over, even then. 



