254 [November, 



Linn., by the silvery pubescence of its under-side, and by its smaller 

 size— 4-i| mm. 



Among the series of O. fuJifjinosus, Linn., in the Power collec- 

 tion at the South Kensington Museum, is a specimen labelled " Wey- 

 bridge," which it appears to me should be referred to O. dorsalis, Fab. 



I am indebted to Mr. Edward Saunders for his confirmation of 

 my identification of the species and for referring me to the descrip- 

 tion of it by Mulsant and Rey. 



The Grove, Coulsdon, Surrey: 

 October, 1909. 



[I have a specimen of this insect from Sandown, I. W., captured 

 in July, 1888— G. C. C] 



THE SPECIES OF SEMIMERUS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION. 



BY PROFESSOR GEO. H. CARPENTER, B.Sc, F.E.S. 



(Plate IV). 



Through the courtesy of Messrs. Bastin Bros., of Reading, I 

 have received two female specimens of Hemimerus taken from a male 

 " Banana Rat " (presumably Cricetomys (jmnhianns) in the Botanic 

 Gardens at Entebbe, Uganda. The presence of this interesting 

 parasite in British East Central Africa is worthy of record, though 

 not surprising, on account of the wide range of its host in the 

 Ethiopian Region. Until quite recently Hemimerus was known only 

 from West Africa, but three years ago, Bouvier* recorded its presence 

 at Guengere, in Portugese East Africa, and gave some valuable notes 

 on its habits. 



English entomologists are familiar with Hemimerus, thanks to 

 Hansen's admirable paper f— in our own tongue — giving a detailed 

 account of the external features of the Cameroon species, and 

 describing the insect's remarkable method of "viviparous" repro- 

 duction, and also to the critical summary of our knowledge of the genus 

 given by Sharp. J Hansen, it will be remembered, inclined to the 

 opinion that the Cameroon specimens examined so carefully by him 

 were specifically identical with Walker's types of Hemimerus talpoides 

 from Sierra Leone, in spite of differences between the terminal 

 abdominal segments of his Cameroon male and those of the Sierra 

 Leone male described and figured by de Saussure in that famous 

 paper, § which startled morphologists by the author's erroneous 



" Bidl. Hoc. Eiit. France, 1906, p. 170. t EntomoK Tidskr., xv, 1894, pp. 05—93, pis. ii, iii. 

 t Comb. Nat. Hut, v, 1895, pp. 217—219. § Spicilegia Eniomologica Genuvtnsia, 1879. 



