2. TABANUS 403 



part of the side-clieeks is mainly blackish. ; back of the head greyish white, very 

 shallow so that there is only an equal narrow rim behind the eyes, and behind 

 this with a dull greyish white ciliation which is short on the lower part but 

 longer whiter and more outstanding on the upper part, though the interval 

 between the eyes at the back of the vertex bears only black hairs. Palpi 

 Avith the end-joint long and whitish yellow, bent at about one-third from the 

 base and thence steadily tapering to almost a point, sometimes with very few 

 adpressed small black liristles before the bend, but almost always with 

 numerous such bristles after the bend right on to the tip, though very 

 rarely without such bristles, and with tiny glistening pale bristles above 

 the knee of the bend ; this end-joint is bare on the inside, and any longer 

 pale pubescence beneath about the base is very slight ; basal joint small, pale 

 yellow, and bearing long whitish yellow pubescence. Eyes unicolorous 

 purple brown with greenish reflections ; facets all equally small. Antennae 

 almost as in the male. 



Thorax rather greyer than in the male, and sometimes more distinctly 

 striped ; pubescence shorter and apparently less dense, but with the pale 

 hairs more obvious. 



Abdomen broader and more ovate than in the male, and without any (or 

 occasionally with a little) ferruginous coloring so that the light grey well- 

 defined triangles and side-flecks stand out sharply against the moderately 

 shining blackish ground colour, and the middle triangles longer than in 

 the male but hardly reaching the f oremargins of the segments until the fourth 

 and subsequent segments. Pubescence shorter, more extensively pale, but 

 more inconspicuous. Belly light grey, with a conspicuous broad middle 

 black stripe which extends the whole length except on the basal segment. 



Legs with shorter paler pubescence. 



Wings rather paler. Thoracal squamae paler and with the margin hardly 

 darkened, Halteres with the knob whitish or yellowish. 



Length about 17 mm. 



This species varies in the male by the occasional almost entire absence 

 of ferruginous coloring on the abdomen, but can then be easily distin- 

 guished from its allies by the three rows of abdominal spots ; on the 

 other hand the female sometimes does have a little ferruginous coloring ; 

 I have seen a specimen in which the pubescence on the side-cheeks was 

 mainly blackish, but usually there is not a single black hair there. No 

 European species is very closely allied. 



T. autumnalis is not uncommon in the southern half of England, as I 

 have records from Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, 

 Surrey, Essex, Suffolk, Middlesex, Herts, Hereford, Cambridgeshire, and 

 Merioneth (Barmouth), from June 22 to August 29. It is known to occur 

 over all Middle and Southern Europe and up to South Sweden, and 

 probably to Asia Minor and Northern Africa. 



Synonymy. — Moses Harris (1780) thought that he recognised Linne's T. hovinus 

 in this species, as he does not seem to have known either of our very large species. 

 Fabricius in 1775 (Syst. Ent. 789) described a T. paganus horn England "capt. d. 28. 

 " lun. prope Henly," and in 1781 (Spec. Ins., ii., 458) he gave Harris' T. hovinus as a 

 synonym, a fact which seems to have been overlooked ever since, and Fabricius' 

 species has remained a stumbling block. It is however obvious that Fabricius 

 jumped to the conclusion that T. hovinus of Harris was a synonym of his T. paganus 

 simply because both occurred in England, and there can be no doubt about Harris' 

 species being T. auticmnalis, while a reference to Fabricius' earlier description 

 (omitted by Bezzi from Kertesz's Katalog) shows \hdX\T. paganus has " Oculi . . . fasciis 

 " tribus f ulvis, quarum inferior oculum terminat. Margo posticus f uscus " and 

 " abdomine utrinque ferrugineo-maculato ; " these characters can only apply to 

 T. tropicus, T. montaniis, or T. glaucopis, and of these three T. montanus is not 

 recorded with certainty from England, while T. glauwpis appears to be very rare. 

 It seems therefore probable that T. paganus Fabr. is the species which we now recog- 



