ART. 10 walker's north AMERICAN" TACHINIDAE ALDEICH 5 



The specimens I had with me had the narrow basal silvery bands 

 of the second, third, and fourth abdominal segments three times in- 

 terrupted ; in other words, a row of four silvery spots, the outer wider 

 than the inner. This is the species referred to by Townsend when 

 he says ^- that Clausicella usitata Coquillett (p. 56) and Neaera lon- 

 gicornis Coquillett ^^ are synonyms of convecta. The discovery thnt 

 there are two species of Schizotachina would seem to indicate usitata 

 for the name of the second, but I have found a peculiar complication 

 here. Coquillett described usitata from three males and four fe- 

 males, collected in the White Mountains, N. H. (Morrison), and at 

 New Bedford, Mass. (Hough). Later he decided that there were 

 two species and removed those from the White Mountains, leaving 

 only a female from New Bedford under the species label. Town- 

 send's note on synonymy was based on this female, and he appar- 

 ently knew nothing of the whereabouts of the males. I have had the 

 good fortune to find the three males, and they belong to a species 

 not named in our collection, which I place provisionally in the genus 

 Plectops. Since no one has published anj^thing about the occurrence 

 of two species under the name usitata.^ it remains to decide which 

 shall bear the name. I therefore designate the males as the true 

 nsitata^ letting the female go into longicornis. This course preserves 

 all the names, while the designation of the female would leave us 

 with two names for one species and none for the other. The effect 

 of this designation is to leave Schizotachina longicornis Coquillett 

 as the valid name for the second species of the genus, differing from 

 convecta in having the basal abdominal bands three times interrupted, 

 in having much narrower parafacials in the male, and in being 

 decidedly smaller. 



Coquillett had three specimens that he called convecta; one from 

 Horse Neck Beach, Mass., has no abdomen, but is probably the true 

 convecta; while the other two, from Waco, Tex., and Colorado, are 

 longicornis. 



Tachina exul Walker, Insecta Saundersiana, p. 277. See note 

 under preceding. Unfortunately I have no note on the type. There 

 is very slight doubt that it is a synonym of convecta., as the two 

 descriptions are so nearly identical. Walker thought the specimen 

 a female, but as it has the third antennal joint divided it was cer- 

 tainly a male. 



Dexia pedestris Walker, Insecta Saundersiana, p. 313. Placed 

 in Hypostena by Coquillett (p. 51). The type is a male of the 

 genus Gryptomeigenia.) and is the same species as Walker's Tachina 

 deinylus., 1849. 



"Ent. News, vol. 26, p. 366, 1915. 



"Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 25, p. 106, 1902. 



