Pipunculidae. 9 



are characteristic especially by their large head and large to enormous 

 eyes, also is the head very mobile as it is sitting on a long stalk from 

 thorax; in dried specimens it therefore easily drops off. Characteristic 

 are also the feet with their large pulvilli, sometimes specially enlarged 

 in the female, and the slender and elongate claws, which are yellow 

 with only the apex black, and likewise sometimes longer in the female 

 than in the male. The family is not large, containing only four genera; 

 of these only the three are known from Denmark, but the fourth, 

 Nephrocerus, with the largest representatives in the family, reaching 

 to 9,5 mm in length, occurs in North and Middle Europe, one being 

 found in England, though rare; it is thiis rather probable that some 

 day it will turn up also here. The family is evidently nearly related 

 to the Syrphidae as shown by the wing-venation, the construction of 

 the male genitalia and other characters, but they are always quite 

 distinct. Girschner thinks (111. Wochenschr. fiir Entom. 1897, 587) 

 that they are the most nearly allied to Baccha, to which genus they 

 are similar with regard to wings and squamulæ, and he says that 

 Nephrocerus forms a transition to Baccha^ and in this, I think, he may 

 be correct; they also show affinities to the Platijpezidae. — The 

 species occur in woods and on meadows, hovering on bushes and 

 in low herbage; they are the most exquisite hoverers of all Diptera; 

 they exhibit perhaps less power in the hovering, but more elegancy 

 than the Syrphids, of which I think that Baccha, Neoascia and Syritta 

 come next to them in this respect, and the two former genera are 

 perhaps also the Syrphids the most nearly allied to them. The species 

 may be seen hovering on meadows between the grass, no doubt in 

 search for Homoptera, and as the females have the facets of the front 

 part of the eyes much to very much enlarged, it may be induced that 

 they observe their victims mainly by sight. Nothing has, I think, 

 been observed with regard to what the species feed upon, and I shall 

 only note, that they do not seem to be attracted by flowers at all. 



Of the family about 250 species are known, of which about 85 

 species are palæarctic; there seems to be only one species, Chalarus 

 spurius^ common to Europe and North America. 



The Pipunculids seem to be little attacked by parasitic Hymen- 

 optera; from the literature I know only the one case mentioned by 

 Perkins of the breeding of an Encyrtid from the Australian P. cine- 

 ra.scens\ Perkins remarks, that just this species has a pupa, which is 

 not subterranean, but fixed on leaves, and that he got no parasites 

 from the numerous species with subterranean pupæ which he has 



