1929] 
Some Remarks on the Masarid Wasps 
367 
shales of Florissant, Colorado. For many of these fossils 
the characters mentioned in the descriptions are such that 
their correct placing among the folded-winged wasps is 
extremely uncertain. 
At the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard Uni- 
versity I have carefully studied types (or cotypes) of five 
of the ten species described by Cockerell from Florissant 
and placed by him in this group. 
Of Palxovespa gillettei Cockerell (1906, Bull. Mus. 
Comp. Zook, L, 2, p. 55) I have seen five specimens. They 
are in such a condition that the true family, subfamily and 
generic characters used in the Vespidae (such as the struc- 
ture of the eyes, clypeus and thorax, and the number of 
tibial spurs) cannot be made out. In some of the specimens 
the fore wing appears to be plaited and, where details of 
the venation can be traced, they agree perhaps better 
with those of certain species of Vespa than with those of 
any other genus of living Hymenoptera. The marginal cell 
is decidedly pointed at the apex, which lies close to the 
costal margin; the first discoidal cell is much longer than 
the submedian; the basal vein joins the subcosta a fair dis- 
tance from the broad stigma (about as in the living Vespa 
Carolina Linnaeus ; but this feature of the wing varies con- 
siderably within the genus Vespa) ; the two recurrent veins 
enter the second cubital cell rather farther apart than is 
usual in Vespa (although V. Carolina diifers less in this 
respect from many Polistes than most other species of the 
genus). The hind wing is not visible in any of the speci- 
mens. None of the characters indicated above are, how- 
ever, decisive in tracing the probable affinities of Pal- 
seovespa. If one examines an extensive collection of Polistes 
and Vespa , he soon realizes the futility of attempting to 
define these genera upon the venation of the fore wing. As 
a matter of fact, the fore wing of Vespa Carolina can well 
be matched in the genus Polistes , while it differs in several 
important particulars from that of certain other species 
of Vespa (V. crabro Linnaeus, for example). Nor can the 
possibility be wholly eliminated that Palseovespa might be 
rather related to the subfamily Polybiinae, which contains 
in the living fauna several genera with a broad (not stalk- 
