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ON CCELOCRYPTUS RUFINUS, GRAV., AN ICHNEUMON NEW TO SUFFOLK. B Y THE E D I T O R .
NOT tili quite recently have I come at a knowledge of this extremely abundant Hymenopteron. Such ignorance is largely owing to that of earlier workers of these parasites, notably Desvignes who mistookPhygadeuon fumator, Gr., for it, and its obscure distinction from allied genera, based mainly upon the coarseness of frontal puncturation. The most obvious generic character, however, is the peculiarly deep and broad notauli, which equally deeply and broadly coalesce basally upon the mesonotal disc (add at lehn. Brit. ii, 5) : a feature nearly always destroyed in pinned speeimens. It has the facies of Glyphicnemis rather than 'Phygadeuon, from both of which the apically acute angle of the discoidal wing-cell differs. Despite this, Bridgman (in whose Norwich collection the species is nowhere contained) named one as ' Phygadeuon abdominator ' and, upon another occasion, one as ' Phygadeuon of the scansor [Plectocryptus grisescens] group.' Nor are our Continental confreres better informed, for my friend Dr. Sigismund Brauns considered a { j to be Phygadeuon flavicans, Thoms. and a $ to be Microcryptus non determinanda. The length is $ 8-10 and $ 6-8 mm. Its European distribution, though wide, seems suprisingly sparse : Gravenhorst knew but a single ÂŁ from Hanover and two rjcj from Volhynia and Vienna, with a single $ later sent him before 1829 from Netley in Shropshire by the Revd. F. W. Hope ; Thomson says " Temligen sali synt i sodra Sverige." Throughout the southern half of Britain, on the contrary, I expect it to be a very common species. My own speeimens come from Guestling on the south coast of Sussex (Revd. E. N. Bloomfield); Wymondley in Herts. (E. A. Butler) and many from Shere near Guildford (Dr. Edward Capron) in Surrey ; Plumstead in Essex (Alfred Beaumont) and Southwold in Suffolk (W. H. Tuck). In Suffolk it is of profuse occurrence : I have it from Farnham and my own Monks Soham paddock, where I see annually from 9 July to 4 September and 0 0 f r o m 23 June to 23 August, always licking with their ligulae the stylopods of Heracleum sphondylium and Daucus carota. Nor is it rarer in the unmetalled lanes of Monks Soham, which run through arable fields, associating upon the flower-tables with the plentiful Tachinid-fly Phorocera assimilis, Fall. This leads me to suspect that Coelocryptus rufinus, which has been nowhere hitherto bred, parasitises some such Tachinids, themselves parasites upon the moths D. pudibunda, S. pavonia, C. verbasci, C. ligniperda and, notably, Mamestra brassicae (Day's 1948 Tachinids, 63). I myself have bred the related Microcryptus abdominator out of the smaller puparium of the Tachinid Digonochceta spinipennis, Mg. Add this Cryptid at Trans, iii, p. 147, next before Plectocryptus.