168 [July, 1908. 



yellow, arista very short (shorter than frons), straight 

 and rigid-looking, palpi yellow; wings faintly yellow, 

 fringe shortish, eosta about to middle of wing, veins 

 yellow, thin veins faint ; legs pale yellow, hind 

 femora moderately stout, tibiae bare ; hypopygium 

 with a pair of narrow lamellae, anal process extra- 

 ordinarily long, clear yellow, the pair of terminal 

 bristles unusually large and black ; ovipositor ex- 

 posed, chitinous, large, and black ; halteres yellow... 



scarcely £ mm. formicarum, Verr. 

 Since these remarks were penned I have seen two papers on the Phoridx by 

 Mr. Charles T. Brues. One, a monograph on the North American J'horidas, appeared 

 originally in the Transactions of the American Entomological Society, No. 4, vol. xxix, 

 1903. Here the chief interest for us lies in the author's establishment of a new 

 genus (Jphiochxta) for the species in Phora which come under Becker's Group II, 

 whilst he restricts the name Phora to the forms with spinous tibiae (Group I). 

 The steps seeem quite justifiable and will probably be generally adopted, although 

 it does not actually advance the grouping beyond the point where Becker left it. 

 The other paper, entitled " Phoridae from the Indo-Australian Region," deals with 

 the species in the Hungarian National Museum, and was first published in the 

 III Annates Musei Nationalii Hungarici, 1905, pp. 541 — 555. In founding a new 

 genus under the name Plastophora for one of the species, Brues, relying on the 

 published description, suggests that Verrall's Phora formicarum should also be 

 referred to it. Looking, however, at the characters given for the genus, this can 

 hardly be the case. In the first place the arrangement of the frontal bristles in 

 formicarum is very peculiar and quite distinct from that in Plastophora, neither is 

 " the proboscis enlarged and heavily chitinized " ; the spurs, too, of the hind tibiae 

 are smaller than, not equal to, those of the middle ones, the legs are not very stout, 

 and the mediastinal vein is present. 



Coquillett's genus Pseudacteon (Canad. Ent., 1907, p. 208) (which Brues 

 probably erroneously considers a synonym of Plastophora), has a similar arrange- 

 ment of the frontal bristles to P. formicarum, and it is quite possible our British 

 species will be found to be congeneric with Pseudacteon cmwfordii, Coquill., a species 

 parasitic upon the ant Solenopsis geminata. 



SECTION B. 



1 (2) Supra-antennal bristles erect, that is, directed straight outwards. 

 <J ? . Thorax, abdomen, and halteres deep black, meso-pleurae bare ; frons nearly 

 twice as broad as long, slightly shining, supra-antennal bristles small, one pair 

 only, palpi black, rather large and thickly margined with short stiff bristles ; 

 wings fuscous, fringe long, costa rather beyond middle of wing and thickened on 

 its outer half, 1 about as long as 2 + 3, and 2 scarcely longer than 3, first thin 

 vein comes off with a gentle curve well external to the fork, and is recurved 

 at the margin ; legs blackish-brown or brownish-black, hind tibiae bare ; 

 hypopygium moderately large and dark grey, a large flap-like lamella on the 

 right side, but hardly a trace of one on the left, anal protuberance minute and 

 hairy 2 — 2j mm. umbrimargo , Beck. 



