306 S. W. WILLISTON. 



IVIelaiiophry!^ flavipeniiis u. sp. 



% 9 . — Deep blue-black, shining ; a silvery stripe between the eyes and base of 

 the anteunsB ; wings light yellow at base ; tegulse. yellow. Length 12-13 mm. 



Cheeks and face bare, smooth, shining black ; from the eye above, on each side, 

 a horizontal yellowish silvery stripe runs to the base of the antennse. Front less 

 shining, in the middle with an opaque, lightly furrowed stripe. Antennse black, 

 arista luteous. Palpi luteous. Occiput with thin black pile. In the male, beside 

 the black bristles, the dorsum of the thorax is clothed with moderately long thin 

 black pile ; in the female with short recumbent black hair. Abdomen in the 

 male with short, erect, abundant black pile, wanting in the female ; two weak 

 bristles on the hind margin of the second segment, a row on the hind margin of 

 the third and fourth segments. Legs black, bristles not very stout. Wings 

 brownish yellowish, at the base light reddish yellow ; tegulse yellow. 



Five specimens, Wyoming, California. In the California female 

 the veins of the wings exteriorly are clouded with brown. The 

 specimens from Wyoming I took in 1878 in the vicinity of Como. 

 The sj)ecies in general appearance resembles Jurinia algens, but the 

 remarkably projecting face is very different from any Tachinid known 

 to me. 

 lUicroplithalina nigra Macquart, Dipt. Exot. ii, .3, 85, 1, pi. x, fig. 2. 



This species, the type of the genus, I have recognized in a specimen 

 from Pennsylvania, but Macquart's specimens must have been in poor 

 preservation. The face, cheeks and front are densely covered with 

 pollen, that on the sides of the front ochraceous, the median frontal 

 stripe is dark reddish brown. The ground color of the face and 

 cheeks is, as stated by Macquart, deep red. The dorsum of the thorax 

 and scutellum is thickly covered with brownish gray pollen, leaving 

 four slender black stripes, the outer ones abbreviated and interrupted. 

 The female front is broader than that of the female, and has, besides 

 the single row of bristles of the male, two strong bristles without 

 above. My male specimen, from Western Kansas, may be different. 

 It has the ground color of the head lighter, the antennae wholly red, 

 the wings less brown, and the posterior cross- vein not /like, but with 

 a strong median outward convexity. 



Since writing the above, I have examined a number of specimens 

 of this species from New England. Rather oddly, however, they 

 were all greasy and uniformly black, apparently like Macquart's 

 type. By soaking them in ether, however, they have been restored 

 to nearly their original- condition. They have the abdominal seg- 

 ments broadly banded in front with white pollen. The European 

 species referred to this genus, by Egger, seems to be closely allied, 

 the legs being perhaps lighter colored, and the abdomen differently 

 marked. 



