DESCRIPTION OF A NEW OENUS (BATRAGHOMYIA, 



W. S. MACLEAY, MS.), AND TWO SPECIES OF 



DIPTEROUS INSECTS PARASITIC UPON 



AUSTRALIAN FROGS. 



By Frederick A. A. Skuse. 



(Plate x) 



More than twenty years ago Mr. George F. Angas reared a 

 Dipterous insect from a small frog, Cystignathus Sydneyensis, Kr. 

 (^=Crinia signifera), for which Mr. W. S. Macleay devised the 

 appropriate appellation Batrachomyia, but did not characterize 

 the newly discovered genus. The original specimen was deposited 

 in the Australian Museum. The first printed record we have 

 relating to Batrachomyia is a note by Mr. Gerard Ki-efift ( then 

 Curator of the Australian Museum), read before the Entomological 

 Society of N.S.W,, in 1863 (Trans. I. p. 100), giving an account 

 of the metamorphoses of a fly reared by him from another frog, 

 (Uj^eroleia) Hyperolia marmorata, which he considered to belong 

 to the same genus as the above-mentioned fly, but which to all 

 appearance represented another species ; the author also roughly 

 figures different stages of the insect's existence, and gives a 

 dia;^ram of the wing of the imago. Mr. Krefft says that the 

 parasite is most common upon Cystignathus Sydneyensis ( Grinia 

 signifera), though he has met with it upon Pseudophryne Bihronii; 

 and he observes that whenever he found specimens of Hyla 

 Citropus they were always infested with them ; but although the 

 larvae all reached the pupa state he could not succeed in keeping 

 them alive afterwards ; only in the case of U. marmorata had 

 the attempt been successful. Both these specimens appear to 

 have been subsequently mislaid, for Mr. Olliff has on more than 

 one occasion searched in vain for them in the Entomological 



