404 



ON SOME NEW AND RARE AUSTRALIAN 



AGElONID.E{OJ)01iATA). 



By R. J. TiLLYARD, M.A., F.E.S. 



(Plates xliv.-xlix.) 



In tliis paper I have attempted to bring, up to date, our know- 

 ledge of the Australian Agrionidce. Since the publication, in 

 1906, of my paper on this family,* many new species have come 

 to light; further knowledge of species already described has been 

 gathered; and also a study of these new forms has revealed much 

 that is unsatisfactory in the present generic definitions. In this 

 paper, therefore, I have attempted to put the classification of the 

 Australian Agrionidce into genera, on a firmer and more natural 

 basis; I have also tried to supply what was so conspicuously 

 lacking in my former i)aper, viz., drawings of appendages and 

 other parts sufficiently magnified to be of real use to the. student 

 of the Order — not only for tlie new species described in this 

 paper, but also for all those described as new in my former paper. 

 I have not, however, attempted to deal with the life-histories of 

 any species here, as these rec^uire separate treatment, and many 

 points still remain to be elucidated, 



The classification, by de Selys, of the suborder Zygoptera into 

 the two families, Calopterygida'. and Agrionidce, tliough accepted 

 by nearly all present-day Odonatologists, is open to the great 

 objection that it is unnatural, and completely obscures our view 

 of the true phylogeny of the Zygoptera. As I have indicated in 

 a former paper, f the whole tendency of the Zygoptera from their 

 inception has been asthenogenetic; and, according as one of its 



* " New Australian Species of the Family Agrionidce,'' These Proceed- 

 ings, 1906, May 30th. 



t " On the Genua Diphlebia," These Proceedings, 1911, Vol. xxxvi., 

 pp.600 fiOl. 



