674 NOTES ON NEUROPTERA, 



They are active little creatures, hiding in the dust when 

 disturbed. 



Family NEMOPTERIDuE. 



Some writers place these insects in a subfamily of the 

 Hemerohiidce, but others rank them as a distinct family. Klug 

 included all the known species in 1836 in the genus Nemoptera; 

 but Rambur in 1842 divided them up into three well defined 

 genera — (1) Nemoptera for the black and yellow forms, with the 

 mouth strongly produced into a beak; (2) Halter, comprising 

 species with transparent forewings, long slender hind ones, more 

 or less dilated at the tips, and the mouth produced into a 

 beak; (3) Brachystoma, containing a single hyaline species, in 

 which the mouth is short in front. In 1844 Westwood placed 

 them in two groups according to the dilation or otherwise of the 

 hind wings, and in 1885 McLachlan added the genus Croce to 

 contain those with filiform hind wings. Kirby, cataloguing the 

 family in 1900, divided them up into seven genera containing 33 

 species, all of which, with two exceptions, are confined to the old 

 world, extending froai the Mediterranean region of Southern 

 Europe to Africa on the one side, and Asia into India on the 

 other; of these species, 14 are represented in the British Museum. 

 iStenorrhachus lualkeri, discovered on the Chilian coast by Mr. J. J. 

 Walker, was described by McLachlan in 1885; and Chasmoptera 

 hiitti, Westwood, was captured on the edge of a swamp near the 

 town of Guilford, Western Australia, in 1847. 



I place m}' species in the genus Croce formed by McLachlan 

 who defined it as follows — " Of small size, characterised by the 

 front being very strongly produced into a slender beak, by short 

 antennse (which are usually somewhat thickened towards the 

 apex), by transparent anterior wings with very open neuration,and 

 usually with a strongly-defined pterostigmatic mark, and especially 

 by long setaceous posterior wings, strongly ciliated, in which 

 even the rudiments of neuration are scarcely to be traced." 



C. attenuata agrees in all particulars, except the cilia, but these 

 appear to have existed and to have been detached through being 

 placed in spirits or rubbed in transit. 



