THE LINNEAN ASCALAPHIDAE. 153 



NOTE XII. 



NOTE ON THE ASCALAPHIDAE (PLANIPENNIA) 

 DESCRIBED BY LINNAEUS 



H. W. VAN DER WEELE Ph. D. 



Linnaeus has described two species of this family in his 

 genera Hemerohius and Myrmeleon. The Hemerobius longi- 

 cornis L., Mus. Lud. Ulr. p. 402, n. 2 (1764), is after his 

 short description certainly the well known Ascalaphus 

 longicornis (L.) that occurs in Switserland, Italy, France, 

 Spain and Algeria. The second described Myrmeleon harha- 

 riim, Syst. Natur. Ed. XH, p. 914, n, 5 (1768), however, 

 is misunderstood by the authors. Fabricius, the author of 

 the genus Ascalaphus, System. Entom. p. 313 (1775), 

 enumerates it as the first species in this genus and gives 

 a copy of Linnaeus' description. But this genus, being 

 restricted by Lefèbvre and the later authors for the well- 

 known palaearctic species with coloured wings, cannot 

 be limited to harharum again. Most of the later authors, 

 probably only judging after the locality and not com- 

 paring Linnaeus' description, have described different species 

 with coloured wings as Ase. barbarus. So Latreille, Ram- 

 bur, Lucas and many others held it for the, in North- 

 Africa common, Asc. ictericus Charp. Olivier and Char- 

 pentier have described the european coccajus Schiff., Petagna 

 italicus F. and Burmeister longicornis L. under the name 

 Asc. barbarus L. 



Stein (1863) and Hagen, having used the description, 

 were brought to the conclusion that the south-european 

 Asc. australis F. is a synonym of Asc. barbarus (L.), and 



Notes from the Leyden JVEusevim, Vol. XXVIII. 



