THE ENTOMOLO^T. 



Vol.LV.] JANUARY, 19f2 



A SYNOPSIS OF BEITISH PROT 

 (OXYURA). 



By Claude Morley, FJJJ.S., F.Z.S., etc. 



I. Subfamily PROCTOTRYPINM. 



As is the case with nearly all the groups of our smaller 

 insects, neglect has been the portion of the Oxyura for a great 

 number of years ; and it is a plaintive task to compare the 

 general interest nowadays taken in entomology as a whole with 

 that evinced by our grandfathers. Their numbers were certainly 

 few, but ours, in the less-worked groups, are nugatory ; nor can 

 much more be said, in respect of this family of Hymenoptera, 

 upon the Continent. Nothing but a well-sustained publication 

 of the Andre's excellent ' Species des Hymenopteres d'Europe ' 

 has recently been issued of importance, but in this great work 

 Kieffer has brought forward such a foule of new species, incor- 

 porated in a most comprehensive manner with those already 

 published, that ignorance now lies at the door of wilfulness, and 

 not necessity. In order that we should not be behind our 

 neighbours in a knowledge of the Oxyura of Britain I have 

 attempted, in the following concise tabulation and notes, to 

 present a superficial notion of the 680 species already recorded 

 from our islands, together with some initial idea of their distri- 

 bution here. 



The first of the eleven subfamilies into which the Oxyura are 

 now divided is the typical one Proctotrypinje, and this is 

 distinguished from all the remainder by the following characters : 

 Antennse rising far from mouth. Scutellum neither discally 

 bisulcate nor basally constricted. Abdomen not laterally 

 margined by a carina. Wings no more than normally ciliate ; 

 front ones with a determinate stigma, but no discal triangle of 

 nervures, its radial cell entire ; hind ones not basally lobed or 

 attenuate. 



Until quite recently this subfamily consisted of the single 

 genus Proctutrypes, which was beautifully monographed by 

 Haliday in his ' Hymenoptera Britannica Oxyura,' fasc. i, pub- 

 lished by Bailliere in 1839. But nowadays it has been commi- 

 nuted into several smaller groups upon characters not, perhaps, 

 too trivial to regard as genera, though the facies are in every 

 case the same, and it is of little moment whether we accord them 

 this rank or simply that of divisions of a single genus. It is, as 

 Vollenhoven says, " to be regretted that Haliday's most precious 



ENTOM. JANUARY, 1922. B 



