272 ME. CLAUDE MORLEY ON THE 



leaving only the head, wings, anterior legs, and apices o£ the terebral valvulse 

 visible. On the 16th ot the same month many were observed at work in this 

 manner : they appeared to pierce the solid wood with their ovipositor, but in 

 reality it was inserted into a previously bored and filled-in hole, through the 

 fine white sand closing the burrows of a bee. Apis maxillosa, now known as 

 Chelostomaf/orisomne, lann. In October, he saw another female on a post at 

 Lessness Heath, near Erith ; this had its ovipositor fixed in a hole, and he 

 himself had to withdraw it. He noticed the same species at work annually 

 (showing they were much commoner then than now, when no member of the 

 genus is frequently met with, and after ten years collecting I have captured 

 but some half dozen of the single species, U. carhonarius, Ghrht.) ; and on 

 23rd July, 1791, he saw one standing directly over the burrow of Apis max- 

 illosa, with the ovipositor in the burrow and its hind femora steadying the 

 abdomen. It frequently withdrew its ovipositor a quarter or three-eighths of 

 an inch and then plunged it in again with great force, with a pulsatory move- 

 ment of the anus, as though through the passage of an egg. 



This last remark so closely relates the parasite with its host^ that it is only 

 on account of the utter lack of all subsequent* observation, both here and 

 abroad, of the oviposition of Epldaltes or any member of the subfamily 

 Pimplirice, to which this genus belongs, in other species of Hymenoptera that 

 we are led to suspect Marsham of having been in error in supposing the 

 host to have been Chelostoma. Mr. Fred. Smith first suggested f that some 

 mistake had crept in ; and this is by no means impossible, for no mention is 

 made of the host having been examined : it was simply inferred from the 

 shape and size of the orifice, and the manner in which it was filled in. Smith 

 remarks that, where colonies of this bee are met with in posts and rails, there 

 are usually also two Coleopterous insects, Melandri/a caraholdes and Clytus 

 arietis, depositing their eggs ; and that it is, perhaps, upon one or other of 

 these that the ichneumon preys. But though certainly more probable, I can 

 hardly suspect so good an entomologist as Marsham J of mistaking , the 

 distinctly elongate borings of the Longicorn for the circular burrows of the bee. 



* It must, however, not be lost sight of that Reaumur (Memoires pour servir a I'histoire 

 des Insectes, vi. (1741), p. 304; quoted bj'- James Eennie, 'Insect Transformations,' 1 830, 

 p. 57) had noticed " Pimpla manifest ator, Grav., " ovipositing through the barricadoed orifice 

 of the nest of the Mason Wasp ( Odynerus miirarius, Linn.) ; though there is something bizarre 

 about the parasite " waiting patiently till the wasp, having laid in a store of caterpillars for 

 the young one, closes up the doorway, in order to find a nest ready prepared and stocked 

 with provisions for her own progeny " I 



t ' Catalogue of British Bees,' p. 188. 



\ See the "Journal of Mr. Kirb3''s Excursion with Mr. Marsham to Northamptonshire," 

 in 'Life of the Rev. William Kirby, M.A., Fli.S., F.L.S., etc., Rector of Barham,' by 

 John Freeman, M.A. Longmans, 1852, pp. 79-112. 



