174 STRATIOMYID^ 



9 . Varying mucli in size, and very distinct from the male in the colour of the 

 legs. Frons shining purplish black, coarsely punctate, but with a brilliant 

 green impunctate polished middle space right away from the lowest ocellus 

 to the white spots against the eyes ; these Avhite spots are larger and more 

 consi^icuous than in the male ; frons and face with almost parallel sides, and 

 at their narrowest part more than one-fifth the width of the head ; front 

 ocellus slightly remote from the others, and placed at about two-fifths down 

 the frons, so that the raised vertical space behind the ocelli is long ; 

 pubescence of the frons whitish about the vertex and more or less so down 

 to the lower ocellus and all long and bent forward, though sometimes mixed 

 with blackish soon after the vertex; after the lowest ocellus it is rather 

 shorter, dark brownish, and curved upwards ; the lower part of the frons and 

 the middle of the face bulge out a little ; face with longer more dense 

 brownish grey upturned pubescence, but the minute pubescence along the 

 lower margin of the eyes and the longer pubescence on the jowls is greyish 

 white, and the very short pubescence on the lower part of the back of the 

 head is also greyish white but dies away about the middle of the head, though 

 becoming again more obvious on the upper part, and there is no stubby black 

 postocular fringe and no outstanding white hairs on the back part as in 

 >S. cu2)rarius and its allies. Eyes in life (according to Lundbeck) greenish, 

 with an iridescent band lying above the middle. Antennae with the thiixl 

 joint larger than in the male. 



Thorax and scutellum clothed with short whitish pubescence, amongst 

 which are no longer erect hairs ; pleurae with rather long whitish pubescence. 



Abdomen brilliant burnished copper or green often tending to purplish 

 after the middle, widest near the end of the fourth segment. Pubescence 

 about the sides of the basal seginents rather long and whitish, but short, 

 obscure, and dark greyish on the disc ; on the fifth segnient it is all greyish 

 black, and on the small sixth segment all black. Ovipositor with long narrow 

 jointed terminal lamellae. 



Legs nearly all orange ; cox« shining black with a tinge of brown ; front 

 femora on about the middle half with a badly defined brownish black ring, 

 which is sometimes incomplete, and which is sometimes absent postero- 

 dorsally ; front tibia? slightly darkened ; tarsi with the last three or four 

 joints, and just the upper side of the tip of the basal joint of the hind jDair, 

 blackish. Pubescence on the femora shorter and very slight. 



Wings with an indistinct middle cloud, which leaves the basal third of 

 the wing rather conspicuously pale ; veins blackish, and the indistinct cloud 

 formed by the stigma (which includes the whole end part of the subcostal cell 

 and the submarginal cell) brown, while the space below is darkened down to 

 the postical vein. Squamae paler than in the male. 



Length about 8 to 10 mm. 



This species ii\ easily distinguished in the female from most of the others 

 by the orange legs which always have a darkened space about the middle 

 of the front femora, while the black coxae distinguish it at once from S. 

 hipundatus ; S. miniinibs (if distinct), besides being smaller (though S. 

 fiavipes varies very much in size) has the legs of the female more 

 extensively black. Both sexes are distinguished very easily from >S^. 

 iridatus, cuprarius, and nuheculosus, by the absence of any outstanding 

 postocular fringe, as well as by the paler legs ; the male has much blacker 

 loo's than *S^. minimus, but the distinctions from the male of the species 

 which I describe as S. rufipes and S. nitidus require very close examination. 

 S. nitidus has the whole middle part of the thorax from front to back 

 clothed with black pubescence, while S." rujipes has rufous orange pu- 

 bescence more extended on to the disc of at least the fourth and fifth 

 abdominal segments ; for more minute distinctions the descriptions of 

 these (so-called) species must be examined. The relative position of the 

 ocelli seems to me to agree with S. hipimciatus, though it was upon this 



