OF WASHINGTON, VOLUME XIII, 1911. 151 



REVIEW OF WORK BY PANTEL AND PORTCHINSKI ON 



REPRODUCTIVE AND EARLY STAGE CHARACTERS 



OF MUSCOID FLIES. 



BY CHARLES H. T. TOWNSEND. 



The very important recent contribution by J. Pantel, en- 

 titled "Recherches sur les Dipteres a L,arves Entoraobies," is 

 the first of three memoirs planned by its author to appear 

 under that head, and bears the subtitle "Caracteres para- 

 sitiques aux points de vue biologique, ethologique et histolo- 

 gique." It appeared in volume 26, first fascicule, of La 

 Cellule, and comprises 165 pages of text proper, 2 pages of 

 definition of terms, 6 pages of bibliography, 14 pages of ex- 

 planation of plates, a four-page table of contents, 26 text 

 figures, and 5 well-executed double plates. The text matter 

 is arranged in four chapters, of which the first specially con- 

 cerns us here, covering much ground upon which I have my- 

 self been engaged during the past four years, and adding no 

 little to my own knowledge of the subject of the reproductive 

 and early-stage characters. I should state at the outset that 

 a copy of this publication sent by the author to me in Massa- 

 chusetts failed to reach me here in Peru, and I had not seen 

 the paper until a second copy reached me late in May, 1911. 

 Thus my paper presented before the Entomological Society 

 of America in 1910, about to be published with additions in 

 the Annals of the Society, has been wholly prepared without 

 knowledge of the results announced by Pantel in this work. 



The author presents a table in which he defines ten groups 

 founded on reproductive characters. Primary divisions are 

 made on the form of the egg, the first group having a short, 

 broad egg, to which I should add flattened; the second having 

 a long egg. Two groups are distinguished in the first divi- 

 sion, one with a macrotype, the other with a microtype egg. 

 In the second division a group is cut off on the character of the 

 pediceled egg. The remaining seven groups are divided pri- 

 marily on presence or absence of chitinous terminations of the 

 larvipositor or ovipositor for puncturing the skin of the host. 

 The forms that do not so puncture the skin are then divided 

 on the double-sac or coiled types of uterus, the latter forms 

 separating into those having a delicate uniform chorion and a 

 colored maggot fitted for remaining some time in the open, 

 and those having a dorsally thickened chorion and an uncol- 

 ored maggot deposited in chorion on host. The colored- 

 maggot forms are divided into those with numerous ovari- 

 oles whose maggots are deposited on foliage in vicinity 



