TABANIDAE ACANTHOMERIDAE 



483 



of them aquatic, but others live in the earth or in decaying 

 wood ; they are of predaceous habits, attacking and sucking 

 Insect -larvae, or worms. Their form is cylindric, attemiate 

 at the two extremities ; the slender small head is retractile, and 

 armed with a pair of conspicuous, curved black hooks. The 

 body is surrounded by several promi- 

 nent rings. The breathing apparatus is 

 apparently but little developed, and con- 

 sists of a small tube at the extremity of 

 the body, capable of being exserted or 

 withdrawn ; in this two closely approxi- 

 mated stigmata are placed. In a larva, 

 probably of this family, found by the 

 writer in the shingle of a shallow stream 

 in the New Forest, the annuli are re- 

 placed by seven circles of prominent 

 pseudopods, on the abdominal segments 

 about eight in each circle, and each of 

 these feet is surmounted by a crown of 

 small hooks, so that there are fifty or 

 sixty feet distributed equally over the 

 middle part of the body without refer- 

 ence to upper or lower surface. The 

 figures of the larva of T. cordiger, by 

 Brauer, and of Haematopota pluvialis, by 

 Ferris, are something like this, but .have 

 no setae on the pseudopods. The meta- 

 morphoses of several Tabanidae are described and figured by Hart ; x 

 the pupa is remarkably like a Lepidopterous pupa. We have five 

 genera and about a score of species of Tabanidae in Britain. 



Fam. 16. Acanthomeridae. A very small family of two 

 genera (Acanthomera and Rhaphiorliynchus) confined to America, 

 and including the largest Diptera, some being two inches long. 

 The antenna is terminated by a compound of seven segments and 

 a style ; the proboscis is short, and the squama rudimentary. 

 The general form reminds one of Tabanidae or Oestridae. A 

 dried larva exists in the Vienna collection ; it is amphipueustic, 

 and very remarkable on account of the great size of the anterior 

 stigma. 



1 Bull. Illinois Lab. iv. 1895. 



A 



FIG. 230. Larva of a Taba- 

 nid. [? Atylotus fulvus.] 

 A, the larva, x 3 ; B, 

 head ; C, end of body ; 

 D, one of the pseudopods. 

 New Forest. 



