GENUS PANOPLITES 351 



irregularly-arranged groups of dark and pale scales gives a 

 curiously rough, brindled appearance to the wing. The scales 

 themselves are so large that their peculiar outline can easily be 

 made out with an ordinary hand lens. The internal fringe is 

 usually very long, and the inner rank of short scales are disposed 

 in irregular patches of light and dark colour, just as are those of 

 the veins, though they may be almost all white, as in P. Austra- 

 liensis, or all black, as in P. Africans. In very many respects the 

 genus closely resembles Muciclus. Not a single ^ of any species 

 appears to have reached the museum, but in every one the palpi 

 of the 5 are much larger than in Culex, being about one-third 

 the length of the proboscis inmost, and although the scales 

 differ from those of Mncidus in shape, their general arrange- 

 ment on the veins in irregular groups of contrasting colours 

 is very similar in both genera. The dark scales, too, have the 

 same opaque thickened appearance, and the brindling of the 

 whole body by intermixed scales of two or more shades of the 

 same colour, such as white to pale yellow, ferruginous and 

 yellowish-brown of various depths, is exactly similar, and so also 

 is the ornamentation of the body and appendages, produced by 

 the varying preponderance of scales of one or the other shade on 

 various parts. They might almost indeed be said to be small 

 Mucidi with asymmetrical wing scales, and though the wing 

 scales present a close resemblance to those of ^domyia, the two 

 genera are easily distinguished, even in the females, by the much 

 greater length of the palpi, which are about one-third the length 

 in Pano2)heles and very short in all the jEdes groiq), and for these 

 reasons I think their natural position is between Mucidus and 

 Culex. 



Of the seven species at present known, only two, P. dives 

 (Schiner), and P. titillans (Walker), were previously known, but 

 all belong to the warmer parts of the world. The bite is said 

 to be very irritating, and Dr. Lutz has found that the saliva is 

 distinctly acid. Mr. Theobald defines the genus as below : — 



Palpi short in the $ , long in the S > in the latter witli hair tufts, 

 four-jointed in the $ and ^ ; in the J the first joint is small, the third 

 long, the fourth small and nijiple-Hke. Head clothed with narrow curved 

 and long upriglit forked scales ; thorax with thin hair-like curved scales 

 and numerous bristles ; scutellum with similar squama- ; abdomen with 

 Hat scales with very convex apices. The abdomen of the $ is usually 

 blunt, and the penultimate segment may have a row of short thick spines. 

 Wings densely scaled along the veins loith broad asymmetrical flat 

 scales on each side of the veins only, no median scales, and also in some 

 cases with long lateral clavate scales ; fork of the second posterior cell 



