EUMERUS STRIGATUS AND OTHER DIPTERA 21 



EUMERUS STRIGATUS AND OTHER DIPTERA 

 IN THE FORTH AREA. 



By William Evans, F.R.S.E. 



It is earnestly to be hoped that Mr Grimshaw's appeal for 

 more " dipterologists," recently published in the Scottish 

 Naturalist, does not fall on deaf ears, for assuredly much 

 work on the diptera of Scotland remains to be done. The 

 list of species occurring north of the Border is presumably far 

 from complete, and of only a few, even of the commonest, 

 can it be said that their distribution is adequately known. 

 Among my unrecorded diptera taken in the Forth area there 

 is much material that might usefully be turned to account in 

 this connection, especially in the matter of new records for 

 counties, and should Mr Grimshaw see his way to undertake 

 a revision of his Forth list all my material is, of course, at 

 his disposal. Meantime, it may be well to publish the 

 following records relating to some of the more interesting 

 captures. On the evidence of galls, I have records of a good 

 many Cecidomyidse, but in the absence of the midges them- 

 selves, I am holding these back for the present. In 1907, as 

 recorded in the Ent. Mo. Mag. for 1909, p. 17, I reared 

 Dasyjieiira {Perrisia) strobi, Winn., from spruce cones picked 

 up in a wood near Callander the previous year. 



Eumerus strigatiis, Fin., being of special interest from the 

 economic, as well as the faunistic point of view, I shall deal 

 with it apart from the other records. During the first half of 

 July 1919 this rather inconspicuous syrphid was met with 

 sparingly among shrubs and young trees near the City 

 Hospital, in the south-western suburbs of Edinburgh, The 

 first example was seen on ist July, and between the 8th and 

 the nth six {2 S $ +4? 9) were captured. It was noticed 

 that they were much given to settling on leaves, the broad 

 foliage of a small sycamore being in special favour. They 

 were never seen to hover. On 17th August a female was 

 found in my house in Morningside Park, Edinburgh, about 

 a mile from where the others were taken. When Verrall 



