Ooctonus. Of this genus I have not found very many specimens. It is thick-set, and least like a fairy. Unfortunately, Haliday did not publish any detailed account of his captures, but from the fact of his naming one (plentifully represented in his collection) Ooctonus hemipterus, it is just possible it may be parasitic in eggs of bugs. Gonatocerus is, perhaps, as plentiful as any in the London district. It is a constant visitor to my garden, though I have failed to discover its nidus. Alaptus minimus and fusculus have long been known to me. The first-named is not more than one-seventy-second of an inch long, with a sessile abdomen. Its wings are somewhat hatchet shaped, with peculiar enlargements at the base of the inner margin. The lower wings have a crimped appearance, arising from the mackerel marking. This, and in fact all the family, are to be found running up the glass in a greenhouse, especially on the window facing east. Alaptus fusculus is one of the first to appear in spring--its peculiar jerky gait will at once reveal its identity. Of this species I have bred hundreds from the eggs of a psocid (Stenopscocus cruciatus), an insect much like a common aphis, but very active and shy, having a decided objection to being watched. But “all good things come to those who know how to wait,” and wait he must for hours, days, months, and years before the life history of a single species is made out. Haliday mentions that Polynema (Cosmocoma) destroys the eggs of the cabbage butterfly. I read this twenty-five years ago, but I have never yet found one egg “struck.” Stenopscocus lays its eggs on the leaves of various shrubs and trees. I have found them on lime, oak, sycamore, hawthorn, and ivy. They are laid in patches of ten to twenty, the female psocid carefully weaving a silken covering in an endeavor to protect them from the attacks of enemies; but, alas! who would imagine a fairy fly to be an enemy? Yet its microscopic size enables it to pass unnoticed, and also permits its passing beneath the silken screen, and, once there, woe betide the psocid’s eggs! for the busy fairy taps one with her clubbed antennæ, mounts to the summit, and then lets down the ovipositor until the barbed tip touches the surface of the fresh-laid egg (it must be fresh). Now by carefully focusing a good magnifier, we can observe the fairy taking a firm hold of the surface of the egg with the two curved tips of each of her exquisitely formed toes! Next we note that pressure is being put upon the barbed ovipositor. The antennæ are pressed firmly to the surface, and impress the observer with the fact that some very serious business is in hand. Eleven minutes have passed without any sign of a move, when just after eleven and a quarter the ovipositor positively bumps through the shell. There is another serious pause, and then up go the clubbed antennæ, and very carefully the ovipositor is withdrawn until it slips back between the sheaths. The fairy