MR. CLAUDE MORLEY ON ICHNEUMON MANIFESTATOR. 271 



Observations on the CEconomy of the Iclmeumon manifestator, Marsham 

 [nee Linn.). An Historical Note. By Claude Morley, F.E.S. 

 (Commmiicated by E. A. Cockayne, F.L.S.) (With text-figure.) 



[Read 4th February, 1909.] 



So long ago as the year 1794 a former Hon. Secretary of the Linnean 

 Society, Thomas Marsham, author of the earliest work exclusively devoted to 

 British beetles *, read before this Society a Memoir f upon " (Economy of the 

 Iclmeumon manifestator, Linn.^' ; and this has subsequently been oft-quoted 

 as the most complete account we have had, even to the present time, of the 

 habits of the genus Ephialtes, Schr., though the identity of the species 

 referred to with that described by Linn sens has frequently been doubted and 

 never satisfactorily established. Marsham's description of it : " Corpore atro 

 immaculato, abdomine sessili cylindrico, pedibus rufis," might be applied with 

 equal accuracy to all the members of this genus, in such a manner that, in my 

 ' lehneumonologia Britannica ' J, I was obliged to place these most valuable 

 observations generically, for to append them to any specified species would be 

 invidious, excepting in the case of Ephialtes manifestator^ Linn., itself ; and 

 that Marsham's insect differed from the last named species is made abundantly 

 plain by his drawings on pi. iv. p. 29. These agree, as I have remarked (op. cit. 

 p. 32), very much better with Ephialtes carhonarius than the species indicated, 

 and none of them are more than 17 mm. in length, whereas the actual species 

 never attains maturity at a smaller size than 21 mm. 



It may not be out of place, perhaps, to notice the interesting habits of the species 

 given by Marsham. He says that he first observed the insect, of which the male 

 was unknown to him, sitting on an old post in Kensington Gardens on 9th June, 

 1787. It was feeling over the wood with its curved antennas and, on finding 

 the burrow of some insect, they were thrust into it up to their bases § ; the 

 horns were withdrawn and again inserted, until the insect was assured that the 

 victim, for whom she desiined her eggs, was present and in a fit condition to 

 receive them. Then her position was reversed and the long ovipositor intruded 

 into the hole, in one or two instances so far that the body was also concealed, 



* Entomologia Britannica — Coleoptera. 1802. 

 t Trans. Linn. Soc. iii. (1797) pp. 23-29 et figg. 



X ' The Ichneumons of Britain/ vol. iii. pp. 31-33 (MM. Brown, 20 Fulham Road, S.W.), 

 1908. 



§ Cf. Kirby, ' Monographia Apum Angliee,' i. p. 186, et ii. p. 251. 



