674 ASILID^ 



end upper-piece (fig. 358). Philonicus alhiceps miglit possibly be confused 

 with M. rusticus, but the female of P. albicejys may be at once dis- 

 tinguished by the terminal circlet of spines to the ovipositor, and the 

 male by the absence of any process at the end of the eighth ventral 

 segment and the absence of long pubescence on the anterior legs, while 

 F. alhiceps in both sexes is a much lighter grey insect and has only 

 two long white marginal bristles on the scutellum. 



M. rusticus is known to me as British from only a very few specimens. 

 Mr J. H. A. Jenner took a small male in the Coombe, Lewes, on August 

 9, 1886 ; Mr H. W. Andrews took a pair in cop. at Freshwater in the Isle 

 of AVight on August 13, 1903 ; two males w^ere in the Eev. 0. Pickard 

 Cambridge's collection which were probal^ly taken on the coast of Dorset 

 or Hants; Mr Charbonnier has sent me a record from Henbury in 

 Gloucestershire, and I have seen a female in the Entomological Club 

 collection. 



Synonymy. — I have very little faith in any old British records of this species ; 

 for instance I found three supposed representatives in C. W. Dale's collection at 

 Oxford which proved to be one M. atricapiUus and two Dysmachus trigomis. 



2. M. atricapiUus Fallen. Femora and tibiae with reddish stripes. 

 Eighth ventral segment of the male produced into a two-horned lobe. 

 Bristles on the thorax, scutellum, and legs nearly all blackish. 



A moderate-sized brownish grey species with blackish 

 brown thoracic stripes, which is easily distinguished from any 

 other British species of Asilinw (except E. cingulatus) by the 

 colour of the legs, and from almost all known species by the 

 two-horned process from the ventral margin of the eighth 

 abdominal segment of the male. 



$ . Face narrow but widening downwards, greyish yellow with the middle of the 

 space between the upper end of the facial knob and the antennte blackish but 

 not shining black ; facial knob large, strongly arched, and bearing a strong 

 face-beard which leaves the upper and outer thirds of the face bare but which 

 extends outwards at its lower part in a line towards the jowls; face-beard 

 composed of long strong black hairs with numerous whitish hairs on the 

 middle of the lower part (though Loew states that sometimes these are 

 missing) ; jowls, chin, and lower part of the back of the head bearing abundant 

 long whitish pubescence, and the ujiper third of the back of the head with the 

 postocular festoon (rather irregular on its upper jjart) of about sixteen strong 

 black bristles of which most are slightly curved forwards at the tip and 

 which are strongest on the upper part just before the gap caused by the 

 vertical channel, and this festoon is continued a little way downwards about 

 the middle of the head by about four similar but yellow bristles ; a few short 

 thin yellow hairs occur between the festoon and tlie eyes, and some long thin 

 yellow hairs behind it at the vertex ; the bristly hairs about the ocelli 

 and those on the sides of the blackish orange or grey frons are black and 

 rather long, but the vertex is bare between the eyes and above the ocelli and 

 is all orange or yellowish grey in some lights or blackish with sjiarse golden 

 dust in other lights ; frons blackish and bare on the depressed middle part ; 

 collar yellowish grey, with fine pale yellow pubescence and about four 

 i-ather strong black bristles on the upper part. Proboscis shining black, with 

 short obscure pubescence round the tip and very long pale pubescence 

 beneath the basal half ; palpi thin and black, with long black and whitish (or 



