BY FREDERICK A. A. SKUSE. 55 



(including the insect described originally by Walker as Ptilogyna 

 par) are included in Ischnotoma (g.n.). The examination of a 

 very large number of specimens from all parts of Australia strongly 

 convinces the author that only a single species of Macromastix has 

 been hitherto recorded from this country ; the original species, M. 

 costalis, Swed., having been described under no less than six 

 different names. Descriptions of five new species are now added; 

 in one of these, the male possesses not nearly such long antennae 

 as 31. costalis; the remaining four, while displaying all the 

 leading characters of the genus, possess equally short antennae 

 in both sexes. 



It will be noticed that the genera have been classified under 

 the three sections suggested by Baron Osten-Sacken (Studies on 

 Tipulidae, I.), but this has been done in a most unsatisfactory 

 manner, seeing that it is at present diflScult to define the limits 

 of any of them. Indeed in order to possibly discover well-defined 

 sections among these insects, the student must first accumulate a 

 mass of material from all pares of the world, and have access to the 

 types of the previously described genera. It does not appear that 

 we are justified in separating Dolichopeza and its relatives from 

 the genera provisionally classified under Tipulina, for the 

 reason that it is uncertain whether forms like Habromastix and 

 Phymatopsis are not exactly intermediate, and do not baffle all 

 attempts to draw the line between the two. If we place 

 them in a third group of Dolichopezina, the extent of that sec- 

 tion will be so amplified that there appeai-s no reason why other 

 genera with simple genital organs in the (J, abnormal antennae, 

 and with or without nasus to rostrum, should be excluded ; and 

 eventually we might find ourselves placing Ptilogyna and its allies 

 in the same section. An exhaustive examination of the genital 

 organs in Gtenophora and its relatives may discover characters 

 which are distinctive ; but Clytocosmus, which exhibits the 

 general features of Ctenophora, is provided with a long 

 glabrous rostrum, no nasus, and agrees with certain Tipulina 

 in the venation of the wings. 



