ON THE CHALCIDID^ OF THE ISLAND OE GRENADA. 129 



On the ChalcicUdce of the Island of Grrenada, B.W.I. By 

 L. O. Howard, Ph.D., Entomologist to U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture. (Communicated by F. DuCane God man, 

 P.E.S., F.L.S., on behalf of the Committee for Investigating 

 the Flora and Fauna of the West-Indian Islands.) 



[Read 17th December, 1896.] 



Of the collection of parasitic Hymenoptera made by Mr. H. H. 

 Smith on the Island of Grenada during the spring of 1891, under 

 the auspices of the West India Committee , Mr. Ashmead has 

 already reported upon the Ichneumonidse, Braconidae, Cynipidae, 

 and Proctotrypidse, in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society 

 of London, 1895, pp. 742-812. The Chalcididae, forming the rest 

 of the collection, are described in the following pages. The 

 collection in this family was not a large one. Mr. Smith informs 

 me that he made no especial effort to collect the insects of this 

 group. There were, nevertheless, between six and seven hundred 

 specimens, among which the writer has found 132 species, of 

 which 72 are new and 60 have previously been described. 

 Hepresentatives of six new genera have also been found. The 

 general facies of the collection is similar to that of the collection 

 tirom St. Yincent, and the occurrence of 72 new species must not 

 be taken to indicate that a large proportion of these species 

 cannot also be found by careful collecting upon the Island of 

 St. Vincent. Of the GO previously-described species here 

 recorded, 50 are known to occur also upon the Island of 

 St. Vincent, 42 of them having been described for the first time 

 in the companion paper on the parasitic Hymenoptera of 

 St. Vincent, Linnean Journal, Zool., vol. xxv. Of the remainder, 

 4 are found in Cuba and Central America, 2 in Brazil, and 1 only 

 in Florida and St. Vincent, Six are parasites of scale insects, 

 and are likely to be carried to any country with their hosts on 

 cultivated plants. AH of these 6 are found in Florida, 1 only 

 in Florida and Texas, 4 in the southern United States generally, 

 2 in California, 1 in Japan, and 1 in Italy, the last two having 

 also been found in several localities in the United States. One 

 {Spalangia nigra) is a common European parasite of the house- 

 fly. This species is not abundant in the United States, and, in 

 fact, I have seen it only from the West Indies. 



The insects of this family are far too little known in their 

 South and Central American and West Indian distribution to 



LINN. JOUEN. — zoology, VOL. XXVI. 9 



