49^ DIPTERA CHAP. 



and "Wandolleck has recently made for this and some allies the 

 new family Stethopathidae. It seems douljtful whether these 

 forms are more than wingless I'horidae. 



• Fam. 29. Platypezidae. — Small flics, v:lth jwrreci three- 

 Jointed antennae, first two joints short, third longer, vjith a 

 terminal seta; no bristles on t/te hack; hind legs of male, or of 

 both sexes, vAth 'peculiar, broad, flat tarsi ; the middle tibiae bear 

 spurs; there is no evvpodiuni. Platypezidae is a small family 

 of tiies, the classification of which has always been a matter of 

 considerable difficulty, and is still uncertain. The larvae are 

 broad and flat, fringed at the margin witli twenty-six spines ; they 

 live l)etween the lamellae of Agaric fungi. At pupation the form 

 alters Ijut little ; the imago emerges by a horizontal cleft occurring 

 at the margins of segments two and four.^ We have four genera 

 (Opetia, Platycncma, Flatypeza, Ca.Uomyia\ and nearly a score of 

 species of Platypezidae in our British list, but very little seems to 

 be known about them. There is much difference in the eyes of 

 the sexes, in some at any rate of the species, they Ijeing large and 

 contiguous in the male, but wddely separated in the female. 



Fam. 30. Pipunculidae." — Small flies, toith very short antennae 

 bearing a long seta that is not terminal ; head almost globular, 

 formed, except at the back, cdmost entirely by the large conjoined 

 eyes; tlie head is oidy slightly snicdler in the female, but in 

 the male the eyes are more cqyproximate at tlie top. This is 



another of the small fami- 

 lies of flies, that seems dis- 

 tinct from any other, though 

 possessing no very im- 

 portant characters. In many 

 of the flies that have very 

 large eyes, the head is 

 Frfi. 238.— HeadofP(;/?Mnc!<;Mssp. A, Seen from either flattened {i.e. com- 

 iu front ; B side view, showing an antenna pressed from before back- 

 magiutied. Pyrenees. -^ 



wards, as in Tabanidae, 

 Asilidae), or forced beneath the humped thorax (as in Acro- 

 ceridae), l)ut neither of these conditions exists in Pipunculus ; 

 in them the head extends far forwards, so that the area of the 



^ Frauenfeld, J'crh. Gcs. Wicn, xx. p. 37, pi. iii. 



^ For monograph of Pipunculidae, .see Becker, Berlin, ait. Zeitschr. xlii. 1897, 

 pp. 25-100. 



