232 MEMOIRS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM 



SO remarkable, emerges from blind and radical Apocryptx and Sycocryptx, the per- 

 petual dwellers in the interior of figs." " But the affinity of these two genera to the 

 Chalcidix is more evident and appears by several connecting links in the Agaonidse; 

 and thus the near relation to the general ancestors of the thousands and perhaps 

 tens of thousands of the Chalcidise species, the tribe being considered in unity, are 

 cradled in figs." 



Our knowledge of fig-insects, within the past twenty-five years, has been very 

 greatly augmented by the studies of Prof. John O. Westwood and Sir Sidney Saun- 

 ders, of England, Dr. Gustav Mayr, of Vienna, Austria, Dr. Paul Mayer, of the 

 Naples Station, Italy, and my own studies on some Florida, Mexican and West 

 Indies species, so that to-day sufficient forms are known in both sexes to enable me 

 to segregate, define and place in their proper groups, the miscellaneous insects 

 known as fig-insects. 



In this work I have restricted the Agaonidse to the caprifiers, or true fig-insects, 

 chalcid-fiies that live in and pollenize, or fructify, fig-trees. 



The others^ heretofore classified with them, belong elsewhere, in three or four 

 different families, and are either inquilinous or genuine parasites. Some, the vast 

 majority, belong to the Torymidse, while others belong to the Chalcididx, Miscogas- 

 teridx, Pteromalidse, etc. 



All fig-trees, in a wild state, are dioecious and wherever fig-trees grow, principally 

 in tropical and semi-tropical countries, there also will be found fig-insects, for these 

 microscopic creatures are essential to their pollenization. 



Undoubtedly, judging from the great number of fig-trees known to botanists, 

 many genera and hundreds of species still remain unknown to us. 



Among the genuine fig-insects, two well-marked subfamilies may be distin- 

 guished, separable by the aid of the following table : 



TABLE OF SUBFAMILIES. 

 Abdomen in 9 subcompressed, the ovipositor prominent, the mandibles with an appendage, usually ser- 

 rate ; males apterous, the abdomen long, narrowed towards apex and curving beneath the thorax. 



Subfamily I. Agaonin^e. 

 Abdomen in 9 subcompressed, the ovipositor prominent, the mandibles without an appendage, the palpi 

 sometimes with an appendage ; otherwise similar to the Agaoninse ; males apterous, the abdomen broad- 

 ened towards apex, narrowed towards the base, and with a tubercle or long filament at each apical 

 angle Subfamily II. Sycophagin^. 



Subfamily I. Aqaonin^. 

 1883. Cynipidse, Division I., Sycophagides (partim), Saunders, Trans. Ent. Soc. 

 London, 1883, p. 20. 



