1902.] 



Walker professed to recognise A. ornata, Mg., but his descrip- 

 tion can hardly be taken to refer to our insect, as he says :— " costal 

 vein ending at the tip of the wing : prcelrachial (discal) ending on the 

 hind border at some distance from the tip" whereas in A. stjrphoides 

 the costa is continued to the end of the discal vein ; also in his synop- 

 tical table he says :— " Discal transverse vein parted by very little more 

 than its length from the prcelrachial transverse, and ly nearly twice its 

 length from the border," which again does not suit our insect. In 

 spite of this, and possibly because Walker gave his species as preying 

 on Aleurodes phillyrece, Haliday in writing to Frauenfeld, said :— " The 

 species described by Walker appears identical with Acletoxenus syr- 

 phoides " (v. Frauenfeld, Verh. z.-b. Wien, xviii, 898), and caused 

 Frauenfeld to give A. ornata, Wlk. {nee Mg.), as a synonym of his 

 Acletoxenus syrphoides ; though in the descriptions there seems to be 

 far more evidence against Walker's ornata being a synonym than 

 there is against Meigen's ornata. Apparently it was only through 

 this synonymy that the name A. syrphoides was recorded in our 

 British List. 



Loew, in 1864, described a species as Gitona formosa, and his 

 description applies wonderfully well to our insect ; but he says the 

 bristles on the frons are entirely as in G. distigma, whereas in A. 

 syrphoides the ocellar bristles are absent, and he also says the venation 

 is exactly the same as in G. distigma, whereas in A. syrphoides there 

 are marked differences (v. Frauenfeld's figures, Verh. z.-b. Ges. Wien, 

 xviii, 899). 



Under these circumstances, only an examination of the original 

 type specimens, or the capture of specimens answering more ac- 

 curately to the descriptions, will settle the synonymy of this species ; 

 as a help to future students I may add that Prof. Brauer has failed 

 to find the type of Meigen's A. ornata in the Winthem Collection at 

 Vienna, so it may be in Paris ; Mr. E. E. Austen cannot find Walker's 

 specimens of A. ornata at the British Museum ; Dr. Carpenter writes 

 from the Science and Art Museum, Dublin : " after a good look at 

 the Haliday Brosophilines, I have failed to find anything approaching 

 your figure ;" while Loew's type of G. formosa is probably in his 

 collection at Berlin, but I have not been able to ascertain any parti- 

 culars about it. 



Sussex Lodge, Newmarket : 



December, 1901. 



A 2 



