280 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



belongs to the family Tipulidae; the other to the family 



Leprtidae. 



Tipula flavicans Fabricius 



1806 Tipula f I a v e s c e n s (in erratis, flavicans) Fabricius, Syst. 



Antliaitoruiu, p.24 

 1821 Tipula flavicans Wiedemann, Diptera Exotica. 1:25 

 1828 Tipula flavicans Wiedemann, Aussereur. zweifliig. Insecten, 



1:48 

 1878 Tipula flavjicans Osten Saeken, Cat. Dipt. N. Am. p.38 



(listed) 



This common crane fly is widely distributed over the eastern 

 United States and Canada. It belongs to the New York fauna, 

 but I bred it from pupae collected at Lake Forest 111. The 

 pupae were found in a peculiar and very restricted habitat. 

 In the bottom of a glacial pothole on the top of a small moraine 

 there was a deep bottom layer of mud, muck and humus, nearly 

 dry from the summer's evaporation, and perforated by a few 

 crawfish holes, around whose mouths were little hillocks of 

 clay, brought up by the crawfishes from a deeper stratum. In 

 these clay hillocks, and only in these, I found the pupae, placed 

 vertically in cylindric cavities, their heads almost reaching the 

 upper surface of the clay. I collected a number of the pupae 

 on Sep. 22, and the imagos began to emerge on the 23d and 

 were all out on the 27th. During this time the adult flies were 

 common among the bushes all about the pothole. They were 

 not so easy to caitch as are most crane flies; they readily took 

 flight on the approach of a net, and, if pursued, would take 

 refuge high up in the branches of neighboring trees, well out 

 of reach. 



Pupa [pi. 10, fig.3]. Length 2Gmm, abdomen 20mm, respiratory 

 horns 1.3mm; greatest diameter of the thorax 4mm, of abdomen 

 8 mm. 



Body cylindric, tapering at ends on the head and from the 

 eighth abdominal segment, the abdomen with parallel sides, the 

 thorax thickened toward its middle. Colors (generally obscured 

 by adherent dirt) brown, paler on wings and legs, on lateral 

 margins of abdomen and on two broad dorsal and two ventral 

 areas nearly covering each abdominal segment. 



Head unarmed; rostral sheath and base of antennal sheaths 

 transversely corrugated. Antennae curving posteriorly around 



