158 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



17. Proctotrypes micrurus, Kieff. 



Serphus micrurus, Kieff, in Andre, Spp. Hym. Eur., x, p. 312. 



Hitherto known from only Portugal and France. I am 

 enabled to introduce this species as British on the strength of 

 three females taken by me on October 2nd, from the inside of a 

 dead rabbit at Bentley woods, near Ipswich; another captured 

 with these is now lost. All four were probably no more than 

 sheltering here from the weather, since with them were no insects 

 but the Braconid, Meteor as filator, Hal. (cf. ' Entom.,' 1908, 

 p. 150), a Lepidopterous parasite. 



18. Proctotrypes viator, Hal. 



Proctrotrupes viator, Hal., I.e., p. 12. $ 2 ; Voll., I.e., p.- 31, 

 pi. xix, fig. 7, ? . Serphus viator, Andre, I.e., p. 311. 



Southern and western Europe from the Crimea to France, 

 from May to September. Common in woods in both Ireland 

 and England, though less frequent than P. pallidipes (Haliday and 

 Walker), Scotland (Cameron). We have nothing published 

 respecting its economy but Curtis' two records : he says (' Farm 

 Insects,' p. 198) " that on opening the cells of the specimens of 

 this beetle [Nebria brevicollis, Fab.] I found them partly con- 

 sumed, and the other had produced six specimens of P. viator (?), 

 thus showing that this parasite keeps in check . . . the 

 larvae of ground beetles." Kieffer omits the query, carefully 

 perpetuated by van Vollenhoven, whom he obviously copies, for 

 he omits Curtis' more certain record from another ground beetle, 

 Pterostichus vulgaris, Linn. (lib. cit., p. 131), thus: the larvae of 

 Omaseus mtlanarius are " frequently infested by a parasite called 

 P. viator.''' It is remarkable that entomologists nowadays ascribe 

 the host to the Staphylinidse ; thus Edward Step sent me four 

 bred in 1909 " from Creophilus maxdlosus " at Worcester Park in 

 Surrey ; K. G. Blair gave me three bred at the end of April, 

 1913, " from Ocypus olens" larva at Eastbourne in Sussex, and 

 Dr. T. A. Chapman was interested in an " Ocypas olens " larva 

 found at Beigate, in Surrey. I have recorded (' Trans. Entom. 

 Soc.,' 1907, p. 9) the occurrence of a similar larva in my Monks 

 Soham garden. A later record is that of a " Coleopterous larva " 

 dug up in a garden at Skegby in Notts during July, 1917, whence 

 two imagines emerged the same month. Charles Nicholson, in 

 1918, met with two instances of " Coleopterous larvae," dug up in 

 a Walthamstow garden, each producing about fifteen of these 

 parasites. It is more than probable that Frohawk's record 

 (' Entom.,' 1886, p. 225) also refers to the present species, since 

 Exallonyx ater has hitherto been so little understood. P. viator 

 is everywhere common, and I have records from Suffolk, Wilt- 

 shire, Hampshire, etc., up to Banchory in the Kincardine 

 highlands of Scotland, where Elliott found it not uncommonly. 



