2. TABANUS 391 



A. rusticus ; front coxae clothed with rather abundant long pale yellow pubes- 

 cence ; bare space beneath the front femora shining reddish orange and the 

 dense fringe of short black bristles on its anterior margin inconspicuous. 

 Pubescence on the front femora mainly black posterioi'ly except sometimes 

 about the base, but on the rest of all femora pale greyish yellow, though 

 sometimes there is a little black pubescence about the tip of the middle pair ; 

 the short bristly pubescence on the tibiae and tarsi mainly black, and the 

 rather conspicuous dorsal fringe on the hind tibiae almost entirely so. 



Wings as in the male. Squamae (alar) smoky with a brown margin ; 

 thoracal pair pale brownish yellow with a yellow margin. Halteres brownish 

 yellow, but brownish on the inner side of the base of the knob. 



Length about 13 mm. 



This species has probably been very much confused with A. rusticus, 

 but when placed side by side the two species appear quite distinct, and 

 my description has mainly referred to the distinctions, which chiefly 

 lie in the colour of the femora, in the form of the two dark abdominal 

 stripes, in the colour of the tiny bristles on the palpi and the basal joint of 

 the antennse, and in the width of the frontal stripe in the female. A. 

 latislriatvs varies in the amount of fulvous coloration on the abdomen, 

 and I have endeavoured to give an accurate description from British 

 specimens (3(? 7?), because Brauer's description is not very elaborate 

 and as far as the male is concerned is either inaccurate or inapplicable 

 to the male of this sjpecies. 



A. latistriatvs was taken in Britain by Colonel Yerbury at Arne 

 in Dorset on August 26, 1906, but the specimen (a female) was naturally 

 mistaken for A. rvsticus ; in August 1907 however he caught several 

 specimens, including three males, at Walton-on-Naze in Essex, and again 

 they were mistaken for A. rusHcvs, but when writing my detailed 

 description from them for this work I detected the difference. They 

 occurred on the salt marshes near the town from August 8 to 22, and 

 upon one occasion Colonel Yerbury saw them in some numbers amongst 

 sheep ; the males were obtained by sweeping the herbage. Brauer 

 described the species from specimens taken in Spain, Corfu, Dalmatia, 

 and Eagusa, while Villeneuve has stated that 2\ nigrifacics Gobert from 

 Bordeaux is a synonym. 



Synonymy. — I cannot doubt the identification of the female of this species, nor 

 have I the slightest doubt about the males belonging to the same species ; if 

 however the male as described by Brauer belongs to this species (concerning which 

 he himself was in doubt) it was incorrect to say "Vorclerbeine ganz schwarzbraun." 

 Villeneuve has stated that Tah. nigrifacies Gobert is a synonym, and it is not 

 unlikely that it is the Tahamis ruralis of Zetterstedt. 



TABANUS. 



{Scnsu st7'icto.) 



Tahanus ZeUer, Isis, 18-10, 814; Osten Sacken, Mem. Bost. Soc, 

 ii., 425. 



The characters of this subgenus are the same as those of the comprehensive 

 genus (page 347) with the following limitations. 



Eyes bare. Vertex without any ocelligerous tubercle. 



Even these two characters are not absolute, as some species have an 

 almost microscopical sparse pubescence on the eyes, and some have faint 



