114 HYMENOPTERA. 



swimming in tlie adult state on the surface of pools, and they 

 are the low, minute, degraded Proetotrnpids, PrestidcJda 

 natans and Polynema natans descriljed by Mr. Lubbock. • The 

 Hj^menoptera do not imitate or mimic the forms of other in- 

 sects, l)ut, on the contrary, their forms are extensively copied in 

 the Lepidoptera, and especially the Diptera. A partial excep- 

 tion to this law is seen in the antenna3 of the Australian genus 

 Thaumatosoma, where they are long and slender, and knobbed 

 as in the butterfly, and also in Tetralonia mirabilis of Smith, 

 from Brazil. 



The Hymenoptera, also, show their superiority' to all other in- 

 sects in the form of their degraded wingless species, such as 

 Pezomachus, the Avorkers of Formica and the female of Mutilla. 

 In these forms we have no striking resemblances to lower orders 

 and suborders, but a strong adherence to their own Hj'menop- 

 terous characters. Again ; in the degradational winged forms, 

 we rarely find the antennae pectinated ; a common, occurrence 

 in the lower suborders. In a low species of the Apiarice, 

 Lamprocolletes dadocerus, from Australia, — that land of anom- 

 alies, — the antennre are pectinated. This, Mr. F. Smith, the 

 best living authority on this suborder, says, "is certainly the 

 most remarkable bee that I have seen, and the onl}' in- 

 stance, to ni}' knowledge, of a bee having pectinated antenntB ; 

 such an occurrence, indeed, in the Aculeate H3'menoptera is 

 only known in two or three instances, as \\\ Psammotlierma Jlab- 

 eJlata amongst the Mutillidca, and again in Ctenocerus Khigii 

 in the Pompilidm ; there is also a modification of it in one or 

 two other species of PompilidcG ." Among the Tenthre- 

 dinidce, the male Lopliyrus has well-pectinated antenn;^, as 

 also has Cladomacra macropus of Smith, from New Guinea 

 and Celebes. 



The wings of i^erhaps the most degraded Hymenoptera, the 

 Proctotrupidce, are rarel}'- fissured ; when this occurs, as in 

 Pteratomus Putnamii, they somewhat resemble those of F^ero- 

 pliorus, the lowest moth. It is extremely rare that the com- 

 pound e^'es are replaced by stemmata, or simple eyes ; in but 

 one instance, the genus Anthopliorabia.. are the eyes in the 

 male sex reduced to a simple ocellus. This species lives in the 

 darkness of the cells of Anthophora. 



