680 ASILID^ 



Neoitamus contains only three well-known European species, but those 

 three are widely distributed and will probably all be found in England ; 

 two doubtful species have been recorded from Greece, and two or three 

 occur in China and Japan ; the genus undoubtedly occurs also in Algeria 

 and has been recorded from North America, South A^ia, and New Zealand. 



Synonymy. — The genus Ramus was founded by Loew in 1846 as a subgenus of 

 Asilus, but the name having been preoccupied three years earlier in the Coleoptera 

 by Schmidt-Goebel, Osten Sacken proposed the name Neoitamus in order to pre- 

 serve the old name as much as possible. 



Tciblc of Species. 



1 (2) Bristles of the legs nearly all black. 



Sixth and seventh abdominal segments in the male steel-blue. 

 Tarsi orange at only the extreme base. 



1 cyanurus. 



2 (1) Bristles of the legs to a large extent yellow. 



Sixth and seventh abdominal segments in the male black. Tarsi 

 considerably orange at the base. 



2 cothurnatus. 



JV. socius is most allied to N. cyanurus but has the tarsi more orange about the 

 base and has the male genital claspers shorter and more triangular. 



1. N. cyanurus Loew. Bristles of the legs nearly all black ; tarsi with 

 only the extreme base orange. Abdomen of the male shining blue on the 

 sixth and seventh segments, while in the female those segments appear 

 to form a part of the ovipositor. Male claspers elongate oblong. 



A rather large dark elongate species. 



cJ . Face unusually narrow near the antennae but widening downwards until it 

 becomes nearly three times as wide at the mouth, while the frons above the 

 antennae is nearly twice as wide as the narrow part of the face but contracts 

 again slightly towards the vertex ; face covered with dense pale yellow 

 tomentum on the part above the face-beard but with less tomentum on the 

 bare sides, and with the blackish ground colour showing up considerably on the 

 facial knob ; facial knob (fig. 362) of medium size, occupying only the lower half 

 of the face, and bearing the long strong face-beard, of which the upper part 

 is black and the lower part yellow or orange but with the black hairs extend- 

 ing partially downwards outside the yellow ones and continuing in almost a 

 single line to the jowls ; the face-beard leaves nearly the upper half and the 

 side thirds of the face bare ; chin- and jowl-beards moderately long and silky 

 whitish, but this pubescence becoming scarcer and dying out about half-way 

 up the back of the head, though a short inconspicuous whitish pubescence 

 remains close to the eyes on about the middle third of the greyish yellow 

 eyemargin ; the black festoon begins at about a quarter the way up the 

 back of the head and continues as a row of rather thin black bristles all 

 round the upper three-quarters of the head without absolute interruption at 

 the vertex, though the strongest bristles occur near the upper eye-angles and 

 the space behind the vertex bears less strong bristles ; the festoon bristles are 

 nearly erect until the upper quarter of the eyes, after which they begin to 

 have their tips bent over forwards and this bending over increases so much 

 that at the upper eye-angles their top half is bent forwards at right angles 

 to the lower half ; upper part of the actual back of the head grey, with some 

 shorter black bristles near the festoon but otherwise bare. Frons covered 

 with not very dense yellowish grey dust which leaves the middle depression 

 between the ocelli and the antennae almost black, deeply sunk between 



