1886.] 51 



large and increases in width to the terminal joint. Thorax strongly transverse, as 

 broad as elytra, the sides behind with a slightly elevated broad margin, the surface 

 is finely punctate, and there is a fovea near each hind angle. Tlie elytra are roughly 

 pubescent and punctate, and there is an elongate, very fine, humeral plica. The 

 middle coxae are very distinctly separated. 



Nagasaki ; four examples. 



Southampton : March, 1886. 



NOTES TOWARDS THE LIFE-HISTORY OP SCENOPINUS 

 FENESTRALIS. 



BY C. R. OSTEX-SACKEN, Hon. F.ES. 



[The " Canadian Entomologist" for April, 1886, contains a stort 

 article by Dr. Hagen : " The probable food of the larva of Scenopinus," 

 which records an observation of Prof. Putnam, who found this larva 

 under a carpet, near an empty case of a clothes-moth. Dr. Hagen 

 asks himself whether the larva of Scenopinus does not destroy that of 

 the clothes-moth, in which case it would prove a very beneficial insect. 



Several years ago I had prepared an article on the same subject, 

 which remained, however, among my unpublished manuscripts. As I 

 arrived at the same conclusion as Dr. Hagen, and as the literature on 

 the subject is a little more developed in my article, than in his, I deem 

 it worth while to publish it here.] 



I have often wondered what the history of that demure little fly 

 could be which keeps so steadily to our windows : Schiner (Fauna 

 Austr., I, p. 159) observed that although the windows stood open for 

 hours every day, specimens of Scenopinus would remain on them and 

 die on the window-sill. That the views on the habits hitherto en- 

 tertained are not correct, I take for certain. Bouche (Naturg., etc., 

 p. 46) found the larva in decaying tree-fungi. Dufour (Ann. Soc. 

 Entom., 1849) found only the pupa, of which he gives a figure. 

 Haliday, on the strength of these observations, called the larva sapro- 

 phagous (Halid., on certain rem. blanks, &c.). Asmuss (Stett. Ent. 

 Zeit., 1863, p. 401) found it in ripe strawberries, and describes the pupa 

 as enclosed in a light cocoon, a statement which renders the observation 

 doubtful. Erauenfeld (Verb. Zool. Bot. Ges., 1863, p. 65) criticises 

 these statements, and gives a detailed description of larva and pupa ; 

 the larva was found among horse-hair in a mattress, and was brought 

 to maturity by being kept among horse-hair, which Erauenfeld, for this 



