152 



The Naturalist. 



With practice these insects can be caught by hand without their 

 being able to sting, and should even the insects have recourse to 

 " the last resort " of bees, the pain maybe relieved by the application 

 of powder-blue to the wound. 



The collector of the family Chrysididae, a small group of 22 

 species of the most beautifully refulgent and intensely metallic 

 colouring, will find that they are monographed by Mr. F. Smith in 

 the Entomologists' Annual for 1862 (price 2s. 6d.) The names given 

 to these little gems {ardens^ fulgidus, auratm^ ignitus, (sneus, roseuSj 

 fervidus, &c.) show how describers were put to the rack to express 

 their due sense of the vivid intensity of their colouring. They 

 are all parasites on other Hymenoptera, and the commonest of them, 

 Chrysis ignita^ may be found any hot sunny day flying along the face 

 of walls, searching with quivering wing the crevices for the nests of 

 their enemies, the solitary bees and wasps. 



The sawflies have not as yet been honoured with a monograph in 

 the English tongue, although it is believed one is in preparation for 

 the Bay Society by Mr. Peter Cameron, of Glasgow, who would seem 

 to be almost the only British student of the group. For the present, 

 however, the species must be worked out by the aid of Thomson's 

 " Hymenoptera Scandinavia'''' 1st vol., which is a monograph of the 

 Swedish species (in Latin, price about lis., may be had of Fried- 

 lander and Sohn, 11, Carlstrasse, Berlin), and of the German works 

 of Brischke, Hartig, Klug, and Zaddach, and the French ones of 

 of Brulle and St. Fargeau. The larvae of the sawflies are to all out- 

 ward appearance, both in shape and habits, like those of lepidoptera, 

 feeding on leaves, and are to be procured and reared in precisely the 

 same way. They differ from them chiefly in the number of legs or 

 claspers, which are very much more numerous in saw-fly larvae than 

 in lepidoptera. A paper by Prof. Westwood on " Saw-fly Larvse," 

 in one of the Entomologists' annuals, is worth attention. Some saw- 

 fly larvae are leaf-miners, and others are gall-producers. 



There do not seem to be any available manuals for the student of 

 gall-flies, although several have been projected. The galls can be 

 collected and reared at home, or where it is more convenient, a green 

 gauze cover can be tied over the gall in the place of its growth. 



The Ichneumon-flies and, other allied groups, are in a still worse 

 position as regards their literature. Recourse must be had to 

 Gravenhorst's Ichneumonologia Europoea, to Holmgren's Iclineiimonologia 

 Suecica, to Desvigne's British Museum Catalogue of British Ichneu- 

 monidee (1856, price Is. 9d,), and other works by numerous authors. 



