Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae 1951. XXVII/Supplementum 1. [antikvár]

Introduction.The first and foremost task of the present paper was given by the question of the taxonomy of the family Chalcididae, and this determined also the method of investigation. After a study and evaluation of the morphological peculiarities of the body the main task was the classification of the specimens into species; not till this had been done was it possible to identify them according to the descriptions in the literature. The statements in the literature thus played only a secondary part. Thus I was able on the whole without being burdened by the opinions of others to solve the synonymies of many forms; in this I was assisted by an unusual large material, as I examined more than 4.000 specimens from the whole western part of the Palearctic region. Apart from the genera Brachymeria Westn. and Chalcis F., which had already been excellently studied by Ruschka (1920 and 1922) and Dirhinus Masi (1947) there did not exist any key to the species or even to the genera. These conditions are well illustrated by the fact that of seventeen European genera taxonomically valid there is not one new one, and yet the comprehensive work of f. inst. Schmiedeknecht, 1930, gives only six genera from Central and Northern Europe (in Czechoslovakia today 13), and that of Nikolskaja, 1948, only nine.I am indebted for material lent especially to Professor Jan Oben-berger and Dr. Karel Táborsky (coll. Národní Museum, Praha, incl. coll. 0. Sustera), Dr. Augustin Hoffer, Prague (private collection), Dr. László Móczár, Budapest (coll. Nemzeti Múzeum, Budapest), Dr. József Erdős, Tompa, Hungary (private collection), Dr. Fr. Maidl, Vienna (coll. Natur-historisches Museum, Wien), further to Dr. W. Hellén, Helsinki, and Professor Vilém Rezek, Bfeclav. I wish to thank the best expert on the family Chalcididae, Dr. Luigi Masi, Genoa, for much valuable advice and for the revision of some determinations, similarly Mr. G. J. Kerrich, London, Mr. J. R. Steffan, Paris, and my teacher Director 0. Sustera, Prague, our best hymenopterologist. Further I thank Ing. Sv. Nowicky, Vienna, Dr. L. Berland, Paris, and all others who helped me with literature or in any other way.*The family Chalcididae has the greatest number of its representatives in the tropics. In this paper I list 58 species, and this number will probably not be increased by more than 10 species. As all species are parasites, some of them [Brachymeria secundaria (Rusch.), perhaps also Br. jons-colombei (Dur.), and certainly also other species] even hyperparasites,