10 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



A NEW SOUTH AMERICAN GENUS OF CONOPINAE. 



BY S. W. WILLISTON, NEW HAVEN, CONN. 



Hitherto but a single genus (Conops) of this group has received 

 general acceptance among dipterologists. A second genus, Physoccphala, 

 was based by Schiner on characters in themselves of but little importance, 

 and which I did not deem sufficient to separate our species in the first 

 paper I published * on the North American forms. A further study, how- 

 ever, convinced me that they were sufficiently constant to warrant their 

 use, particularly in connection with other important ones in the neuratiom 

 which I pointed out.f I have recently had the opportunity of studying 

 sixteen South American species of the two genera, collected by Mr. Her- 

 bert H. Smith, and I am yet more convinced of the validity of Physo- 

 cephala as a genus. 



A half dozen genera that Rondani attempted to establish (to say 

 nothing of Lioy's fanciful productions) were based upon such confessedly 

 trivial characters that they have no where commanded any attention by 

 entomologists, save by Rondani's devoted follower, Mr. Bigot, who, in his 

 last paper % on this family, while rejecting Physocephala, accepts Brachy- 

 glossum Rond., based upon the comparative lengths of the proboscis. I 

 do not think Mr. Bigot's views will receive the approbation of many 

 dipterologists. 



The only other genus which presents any claims for acceptance is 

 Pleurocerina Macq., which I suspect was based upon an accidental mal- 

 formation, the more so as I have seen several specimens of Conops and 

 Zodion with a very similar projection of the front, springing from the 

 frontal lunule, and due to some artificial cause. I am not 

 aware that the type species, described from Tasmania, has been recog- 

 nized since its original description, and I think the genus had better be 

 held in abeyance till specimens are again examined. 



The sub-family Conepinae, then, consists of two genera, to which I 

 here add the third, distinguished from the closely allied Conops by excel- 

 lent structural characters. 



* Trans. Conn. Acad., i\\, 327. 



f Ibid., vi., 888. 



J Aim. Soc. Ent. Fr., 1887, 31. 



