418 Annals of the South African Museum. 



c? , Adb. 28, htlw. 29, pt. 3 mm. $ , 28, 31, 3. 



Very common in Mediterranean Europe and Africa, eastward to 

 Turkestan and the mountains of South India. Not a regular inhabi- 

 tant of the extra-Mediterranean regions in Europe, but appearing 

 there (in Switzerland, Germany to the Baltic Sea, Great Britain to 

 the Firth of Forth) at irregular intervals and sometimes in vast 

 numbers. The unusually early appearance in some cases (middle of 

 May, 1908, in Switzerland) clearly indicates that these swarms are 

 emigrants from the South; all local examples of Sym/petrum do not 

 appear in this country before July and most of them not before 

 August ; in years when there is no immigration Fonscolombei is not 

 altogether absent, but is very rare and local. Very probably corre- 

 sponding habits will be observed in South Africa ; the series taken in 

 Cape Town at the early date of September, 1913, may have been 

 immigrants like those found in May at the writer's Swiss home. 

 Observations made by the writer and Mr. Morton in Southern France 

 seem to indicate that the species is not at all particular as to the 

 quality of water ; we found it abundantly at a very badly polluted 

 canal near the city of Narbonue. This and the migrating habits may 

 have favoured the dispersal of this species so far beyond the limits of 

 its palaearctic congeners. 



PHILONOMON (Forster, 1906). 



A single African species, evidently allied to Sympetrum, and 

 resembling this genus in facies. 



PHILONOMON LUMINANS (Karsch, 1893). 



S. Afr. Mus. : 1 ^,Loreuco Marques (15 . xii . 1911). Coll. Kis : 

 2 ?, ib. (12, 15. xii. 1911). 



d . Labium whitish with a narrow median black band ; labrum and 

 anteclypeus ochreous ; postclypeus and f rons brilliant scarlet ; narrowly 

 and diffusely vellow at the sides ; uarrow r basal black line on frons. 



V +1 



Thoracic dorsum light golden brown, sides greenish yellow ; black 

 dot in dorsal end of humeral suture ; black line at metastigma half 

 way to dorsal margin ; very narrow black line on second lateral 

 suture ; latero-ventral sutures broadly black ; ventral surface yellowish 

 with two broad transverse black bands. Legs black. Abdomen 

 moderately inflated at base, gradually narrowed in third and fourth 

 segment, then almost cylindrical ; greenish yellow and black ; black 

 mid-dorsal line, narrow on basal segments, wider from segment 4 



