i So The Scottish Naturalist. 



tip, with the apices of the joints narrowly, and the inside, 

 yellow ; in some instances the fore and middle tarsi are almost 

 yellow, and the hinder have only a fuscous patch on the out- 

 side in the middle of each joint j in dark specimens the tips of 

 the tibiae are concolorous, and the tarsi are blackish externally ; 

 poisers yellowish, covered by the white wing-scales, which are 

 ciliated j wings glossy, brown nerved, the costa darker j stigma 

 yellowish tawny ; length, 4 lines j expansion of the wings, 6 lines. 

 The fly occurs in meadows about the beginning of June. 



This is the only species that I have succeeded in rearing j 

 but if inferences may be drawn from larvae, there are others of 

 similar habits. A smaller kind often bores into the centre of 

 the primrose and polyanthus (Primula vulgaris), eats out the 

 heart, and then descending into the root-stock, frequently 

 destroys the plant. Another, considerably larger, occurs in 

 the interior of the stem of the marsh thistle ( ' Cnicus palustris) ,* 

 where eaten by a flesh-tinted lepidopterous caterpillar. This, 

 I am persuaded, occasionally at least, preys upon the caterpillar ; 

 for, having enclosed several in a close box, along with some 

 of the caterpillars, the latter had all disappeared next morning, 

 w r hilst the maggots were as numerous as before. In both these 

 instances the maggots pined away, without being converted 

 into pupae. 



This article, written many years since, would be incomplete 

 without reference to a paper on the u Metamorphoses of 

 Diptera," in the " Nat. Hist. Review" for 1857, communicated 

 to me by my friendly correspondent, the late A. H. Haliday. 

 From this it appears that the transformations t of another 

 species of Cheilosia (C. scutellata) have been traced. See 

 Dufour, Ann. Sc. Nat. xiii. 1840, ix. 1848. Eoser, Wurtemb. 

 Zroeyf. Ins. Boje, Ent. Zeit. Stet. xi. 1850. Perris, Ann. 

 Soc. Ent. France. 



Oldcambus, by Cockburnspath. 



* Zetterstedt {op. cit., supra xii. 4664,) says of C. Jlavicornis F., "Larva mensi- 

 bus autumnalibus vivunt devorantes in caulibus CARDUI CRISPI, ubi mox supra 

 radices degunt, teste BoiE, Stett. Ent. Zeit,, 1850, 212."— Editor Sc. Nat. 



T In putrescent Boleti t fide Leon Dufour. — EDITOR Sc. Nat. 



