124 STRATIOMYID.^ 



depressed, and inconspicuous, all pale. Ovipositor with the terminal lamellae 

 short and brown. 



Legs as in the male. 



Wings, squamae, and halteres as in the male. 



Length about 5-5 mm. 



This species may vary even more than I have mentioned above, and at 

 one time I suspected three males taken at Dyffryn in Merioneth on July 

 21, 1888, as being possibly a distinct species, because in them the snout 

 appeared to be even shorter and the white spots on the frons more distinctly 

 separated ; the black basal patch on the abdomen larger, and the third 

 segment without any isolated rounded black spot, but (in two of the 

 specimens) with a quadrate black spot which was narrowly connected with 

 a pair of flattened black spots on the hindmargin, and thereby left a flat 

 white spot on the middle of the hindmargin ; I have however since seen 

 a specimen from Aberlady almost identical with them, and have realised 

 that the white markings of the male vary to a considerable extent 

 (especially in individual localities), so that I now consider them as 

 nothing but a variety. Other varieties worth mentioning are (1) a 

 female from Brodie in which the white frontal spots are reduced to dots, 

 the yellow abdominal sidemargins are very narrow, and there is scarcely a 

 trace of yellow along the hindmargins between them and the isolated white 

 middle spots, the belly is shining black with a large whitish spot on the 

 middle of the second segment and a narrow white streak along the middle 

 third of the hindmargin of the third segment, and (2) a female from 

 Llanbedr in which the abdominal sidemargins extend only to the end of 

 the fourth segment, and there are only three small obscure pale dorsal 

 spots, while the belly has only a moderate- sized orange spot on the two 

 basal segments. Several European species are closely allied, but in Britain 

 A^. notatus may be known by its rather larger size, its short snout 

 (except in a specimen from Kenmare which I have noted under N. 

 liantherinus), and in addition to that the male may be distinguished from 

 N. pantherinus by its distinct dorsal and ventral abdominal white mark- 

 ings, by its small frontal spots, and by its much larger humeral and wing- 

 base spots, while the female is distinguished by those same spots, by the 

 presence of a whitish spot on each side of the frons, and by the peculiar 

 way in which the yellow sidemargins extend (even if interruptedly) along 

 the hindmargins of the segments; from N. %diginosiis the male is dis- 

 tinguished by the distinct dorsal and ventral white markings and the 

 shorter pale frontal spots, while the female has the yellow sidemargins of 

 the abdomen much more extended along the hindmargins of the second, 

 third, and fourth segments. 



N. notahis is not at all uncommon on our coasts, as I have records from 

 Devonshire (Westward Ho and Plymouth), Hampshire (Bournemouth and 

 Fawley), Kent (Gravesend), Essex (Leigh), Suffolk (Aldeburgh), Lincoln- 

 shire (Saltfleet), Lancashire (Coniston), Merioneth (Dyffryn and Llanbedr), 

 Glamorgan (Porthcawl) ; and Arran, Aberlady, and Brodie in Scotland ; 

 and from Wexford in Ireland ; Coniston is not strictly speaking a coast 

 locality, but I have found many coast species about that lake. The dates 

 extend from June 10 to September 16. It is common over Northern 

 and Central Europe down to Southern Germany and Austria. 



Synonymy. — There can be no doubt about Walker's (Ins. Brit. Dipt., i., 26) 



