124 ON A NEW SPECIES OF THE GENUS LESTOPHONUS, WILLISTON, 



investigate leery a Furchasi and its parasites, and during his stay- 

 in this country sent some thousands of specimens of infested leery a 

 Purchasi and Monophlebus Crawfordi to America in order to 

 introduce their natural enemies into the agricultural districts of 

 California plagued with the former. 



During the last few weeks I have bred large numbers of 

 Lestophonus from both the leerya Purchasi and Monophlebus 

 Crawfordi, with the view to ascertain if the species be really 

 identical or not, and having carefully and minutely examined 

 these, and also other specimens kindly transmitted to me by Mr. 

 Crawford, it appears clear that the accepted specific identity of 

 the two has been founded on insufficient evidence. This might 

 be accounted for by the meagreness of the material at the disposal 

 of Dr. Williston when he described L. iceryce, or from the possi- 

 bility that amongst the three or four specimens before him only 

 one represented the Monophlehus fly, while even had the author 

 detected a slight diff^erence in an individual, as perhaps the parasites 

 were not separated according to their respective hosts, the dissimi- 

 larity would not unlikely have been considered merely varietal; 

 while on the other hand, as Mr. Crawford points out to me, it is 

 not absolutely certain that Dr. Williston did receive both species 

 for examination. It is not easy to say from the description which 

 species the author really described, and were it not almost beyond 

 doubt that it does refer to one of these two, it might otherwise be 

 thought to possibly mean a different insect ; the length given at 

 the beginning of the description is, to start with, that of an insect 

 only half the size of the female of the true leery a parasite. 

 Further, it is utterly out of the question to decide from the rough 

 fif^ure given of the fly, which indeed serves only to imperfectly 

 set forth the generic characters, while the wing (the shape of 

 which is inaccurate) exhibits a venation equally unrepresentative 

 in detail of both flies. The legs are also very unlike those 

 depicted. 



Considering the number of specimens which have lately reached 

 America it is not unreasonable to expect that the Monophlehus 



