THE SYRPHIDAE OF OHIO 



69 



Sericomyia — The following notes on ^. borealis are taken from a 

 quotation in Verrall, British Flies, p. 637. "The three 'long-tails' were 

 in a shallow pool or puddle where peat fuel had been dug out 

 the previous year; some of the sods being too fragile for wheeling 

 awa}^ had been tossed back into the pit, but turned upside down. 

 It was on this decomposing mass that I found the maggots sur- 

 rounded with water; their color might be called a dull gray. One 

 thing is certain, that they pass all their stages in the course of the _vear 

 as there were no pools at the place previously to 1893. The situation 

 is damp and the pits, though filled with stagnant water, never become 

 putrid or offensive." W. Sim, May, 1894. 



Eristalis — These are the famous "rat-tailed" larvae which have been 

 noted from very early times, and mention of which has been made in 

 almost every text-book on Entomology. The present studies have dealt 

 briefly with the life-stages of E. foiax and E. aeneus, the latter not pre- 

 viously recorded so far as I am aware. See p. 61. G. B. Buckton has 

 written an extensive ' 'Natural History of Eristalis tenax or the Drone fly. ' ' 

 (Xondon, 1895) which, while it treats the subject in an exhaustive man- 

 ner, is apt to be indefinite about the finer details. He discusses the genus 

 and the species E. tenax and arbiistonon under the following headings: 

 Classification, Life-History, Morphology, Physiology, Histology and 

 Development, Distribution, and Myths, and gives a number of plates. 

 He found the larvae abundant in ponds floating in knots of six to ten indi- 

 viduals with their tails tied together and buoyed up by mucilaginous 

 mas.ses of ova of an undetermined gnat, and gives the following notes on 

 them: The larva of E. toiax has eight pairs of pro-legs, of E. arbustonim 

 seven pairs. The tail is also used in helping the larva to penetrate into 

 soft mud. They were found to be sensitive to the light of a lamp even when 

 all rays of direct heat were shaded off; to touch especially in the region of 

 blunt tubercles on the head; and a large number of larvae i^E. arbusto- 

 rum) were killed by a thunder storm. The puparia are buried but not 

 deeply in mud, doubtless a protection against drought. 



"The common i6". /fw^r.v is essentially the 'Drain fly' of the whole 

 world, as it has followed all over the world what civilization has consid- 

 ered its improved sanitary arrangements of drainage and it has been very 

 interesting to watch the lines of route and the length of time it has taken 

 to arrive at new localities (p. 674). "In October 1S86 (Ent. Month. Mag. 

 p. 97j Baron Osten-Sacken contended, and I think rightly, that this spe- 

 cies spread thru Europe to all Asia and thence to Western North Amer- 

 ica about 1870, after which it received a check in its distribution until the 



