ashmead : classification of the chalcid flies 231 



Family LX. AGAONID^. 



1846. Agaonidse, Family 6 (partim) Walker, List Chalc. Brit. Museum, I., p. 23. 



1856. Agaonoidse, Familie (S. descrip.) Forster, Hym. Stud., II., p. 29. 



1871. Agaonidse, Family (partim) Walker, Notes on Chalc, Pt. IV., p. 58. 



1867. Blastophagidse, Familia, Kirchner, Cat. Hym. Eur., p. 188. 



1882. Cynipidse, Sycophagides, Division 1, Saunders, Trans. Ent. Soc. London, p. 20. 



1897. Agaonidse, Family LX., Ashmead, Proc. Ent. Soc. Washington, IV., p. 243. 



This family is one of the most striking and remarkable of any in the super- 

 family Chalcidoidea. It is based upon the genus Agaon Dalman, established in 

 1818, from a specimen taken in Sierra Leone, Africa. 



The species composing this family, on account of their habits, curious forms, and 

 the diversity of structure in the sexes, were long a puzzle to the ablest and most astute 

 of the European hymenopterologists, but it is now definitely settled that they form 

 a component of this great complex. Sir Sidney Saunders, as late as 1883, placed 

 them as a division with the family Cyniipidx. In my opinion, however, they have 

 little in common with the Cynipoidea, and I concur with Walker, Westwood, and 

 Mayr, in believing them a component of this major group. 



Mr. Francis Walker, an Englishman, was the first to give the group family rank ; 

 but, as is the case with most of his families, he never properly defined or character- 

 ized it, and merely lumped together a miscellaneous lot of insects obtained from figs, 

 and called them a family — the Agaonidse. His ideas of the family were extremely 

 vague and indefinite, and he placed in it many forms with which they had no 

 relationship. 



In 1871, Walker, in speaking of them said: "The Agaonidse appear as yet 

 chiefly in three aspects, and in three difierent regions. The first region is the 

 Mauritius, where they have been discovered by the researches of Dr. Coquerel. 

 The three species figured are said to be 'condemned to eternal darkness' in the 

 central regions of figs. These figs are the fruit of Ficus terragena and are unfit for 

 human food. Dr. Coquerel found the three species {Apocrypta paradoxa, A. perplexa 

 and Sycocrypta caeca) in abundance in the interior of these figs, together with great 

 numbers of a fourth species, which he named Chalcisf explorator and which he 

 believed to be parasitic on the other three species. Dr. Coquerel thought he saw 

 an afiinity between them and certain Bethylids, Scleroderma contractor, etc." 



Walker thought they had more connection with certain South American and 

 Australian Thynnidse. He says : " Scleroderma seems to have more afiinity with 

 Typhlopone, the worker of Labidus, and with Dichthadia glaherrim.a, the supposed 

 female of Dorylus ; and thereby the multitudinous tribe of ants whose economy is 



