1. XYLOPHAGUS 255 



unrecorded European species is allied but has the antennse as in X. ater, 

 and the thorax all brightly shining in the female or its sides broadly so 

 in the male. 



X cinchis is only known as British from North Scotland ; it was 

 first recorded by Dr Buchanan White, who bred several specimens in 

 1873 from larvae found beneath the bark of dead Fir-trees {Finns 

 sylvestris) at Braemar. The British Museum possesses a female which was 

 taken at Eannoch by Mr Foxcroft, and in June 1905 Mr C. G. Lamb took 

 a male at ISTethy Bridge, and in June 1906 Messrs Sharp and Lamb made 

 special search for it there and took a considerable number of specimens. 

 Dr Buchanan White (Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, xiii., 160, 

 1876) gave a detailed description of the larva and pupa, and stated that 

 " the larva lives beneath the bark of dead fir trees {Finus sylvestris), where 

 " it feeds on other larvae. I once saw one with a small yellowish dipterous 

 " larva impaled on the beak -like head, and I believe it sucks the juices of 

 " its prey. The larva hibernates, becoming a pupa about the end of May 

 " or June, and the imago emerges in June and July. The pupa is found 

 " in the decaying matter between the bark and wood of fir trees. The 

 *•' imago may often be found resting on the bark of the same trees." 

 Messrs Sharp and Lamb found the larvae limited to Scotch Fir {Finns 

 sylvestris), under the bark of which they lived on recently dead larvae of 

 wood-feeding Coleoptera. Dr Sharp states that the larvae will not attack 

 a living coleopterous larva nor a rotten one, but that they will hasten to 

 suck the juices of a dead but undecayed one; he has found them sucking the 

 larva of Fhlceotrya Stephensii. Ferris, in 1870 (Ann. Soc. Ent. Fr. (4) x., 

 202), described the metamorphoses at great length, and came to the 

 conclusion that the larvae " se nourrissent des detritus et des dejections 

 " d'autres larves, et je ne ref userais pas de croire que, dans I'occasion, elles 

 " sont carnassicres." It is recorded from quite Northern Europe to Austria, 

 but it is by no means certain that all its records relate to this species. 



Si/7wnymy. — The continental descriptions of the European species of Xyjophagus 

 are so incomplete that it is impossible to identify the species with certainty ; for 

 about sixty years only two species have been acknowledged as European and the 

 males of even those two have not been distinguished properly ; the exponents of 

 X. cinctifs in Kowarz's collection belong to a quite distinct species which has the 

 antennse quite as long as in X. ater, and the frons and the sides of the thorax 

 brightly shining, besides numerous other small distinctions. Loew in 1847 

 (Stettiner Entom. Zeit., viii., 70) distinguished our two species but upon very 

 insufficient material, and he made the remarkable statement that the female of 

 X. cinctus sometimes resembles the female of X. ater in coloring ; a statement 

 which I have never seen confirmed. Rhagio syrphoides of Panzer (upon which 

 Latreille established the genus Pachystomus) was founded upon a monstrosity of the 

 female, as was pointed out long ago. The North American X. alxlomiiudis Loew, 

 if correctly represented by a female under that name in Bigot's collection, only 

 differs in having more reddish coloring on the abdomen. 



