228 (October, 



of the British Museum, who kindly identified the species for me, and 

 besides furnishing me with an account of all that is known of it, has 

 supplied an admirable description of the characters of the insect, 

 which I feel sure you will deem too valuable to let pass unrecorded, 



Aldeburgh, Suffolk : 



August 17 th, 1895. 



CULEX DORSALIS, Mo. 

 BT E. E. AUSTEN. 



This species maj readily be distinguished by the fact that the joints of the tarsi 

 are shining yellowish-white at the tip as well as at the base. The abdomen is 

 yellowisli-white, with a pair of somewhat quadrangular black spots on each segment, 

 sometimes indistinct at the tip, and leaving transverse bands on each segment and a 

 narrow central line yellowish-white. The thorax is badly described by Schiner 

 (Fauna Austriaca, Diptera, vol. ii, p. 62fi) ; in the ? , at any rate, it is dark brown, 

 thickly clothed above with short close-lying pile of a tawny hue, becoming whitish- 

 yellow behind, owing to the junction of a pair of somewhat divergent narrow stripes 

 of the same colour which run from the front to the hind margin. The anterior 

 margin of the dorsum of the thorax is narrowly whitish-yellow in the centre, while 

 the head is clothed with pile of a similar colour, with a narrow tawny spot on each 

 side above. The bright-coloured thorax with its paler stripes, the chequered abdo- 

 men, and the banded tarsi, make this an exceedingly pretty little species. 



Its length is about 5 mm. 



As to its distribution, the species was described by Meigen (Syst, 

 Beschr., vi, p. 242, 1830) from a ? specimen from the neighbourhood 

 of Berlin. Walker (List Dipt. Ins. in Coll. Brit. Mus., i, p. 3, 1848) 

 mentions a single specimen from " England. From Mr. Walker's 

 collection." This specimen (a ? ) is still in the General Collection of 

 Diptera in the British Museum (Natural History). In vol. iii of his 

 Insecta Britannica, Diptera (1856), however, Walker does not mention 

 the species. Zetterstedt (Dipt. Scand., ix, p. 3465, 1850) writes — 

 "Found here and there in Southern Scandinavia in the months of 

 June and September ; I have met with it sparingly at Lund and 

 Lomma in Sweden ; in Denmark it has been taken not infrequently by 

 Herr Stseger at Copenhagen. In the month of August Staegar found 

 the larvae in very great abundance in lagoons {lacunis littoralihus) in 

 the Isle of Amager (on which Copenhagen is partly situated). In 

 Central and Northern Scandinavia this species has not yet been ob- 

 served, so far as I am aware, with the exception of a single $ , taken 

 on June 16th, 1849, by Herr Siebke in Toien, near Christiania, Norway, 

 and forwarded to me." Schiner {loc. cit.) merely states that the 



