— 147— 



Dr. Williston has completed his series of three papers on the 

 Classification of the North American Diptera in the families Xylophagidae^ 

 Straliomyidae, Tabanidae, Leptidae and Syrphidae, published in the Bulle- 

 tin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society (vii, p. 129) and in Entomo- 

 logica Americana (i, pp. to, 114, 152), In these papers some ntw 

 species are described, synoptic tables of the genera and diagnoses of the 

 tribes and families given, and structural features illustrated. 



Dr. Williston has also published Notes and Des riptions of North 

 American Xylophagidae and Stratiotnyidae (Can. Ent. xviii, p. 121), in 

 which eleven species are described as new. 



Dr. Hagen has written of the Hessian Fly in Italy, recording its 

 notice in that country (lb. , p. 129). He has also collated some facts 

 relating to the food of Scenopinus larvae, leading him to offer the sug- 

 gestion that «S\ pallipes found beneath carpets, may be carnivorous (Id., 

 xviii, p. 73). Some observations of my own which are stated in the 2d 

 Report on the Insects of New York, give additional reason for believing 

 that this remarkable larva, feared as carpet-feeder, may prey upon the 

 larva of the clothes-moth. 



The volume last referred to, contains also notices of an unknown 

 larva feeding upon a fungus occuring on quince, the emasculating bot- 

 fly (Cuterabra emasculalor), Bibio albipennis, Microdon globosus, and 

 Trypeta pomonella. 



As addenda to the Scenopinus article by Dr. Hagen, Baron Osten- 

 Sacken has contributed to the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine for the 

 present month of August (vol. xxiii, p. 51 — 52) A T otes toward the Life- 

 history of Scenopinus fenestrate, in which the literature of the species is 

 more fully developed, and the conclusion drawn therefrom that the larva 

 is undoubtedly carnivorous; and that it frequents fungi, hair-mattrasses, 

 carpets, swallows nests, decaying wood, animal dejections, etc., not for 

 the sake of the animal remains or the vegetable matter, but for the larvae 

 or the pupse of the moths that live in them. 



■ Dr. Hagen also recorded the collection in Harvard College Labor- 

 atory, of what is probably an addition to the small number of known 

 marine insects, in Coleopa frigida, Fallen, raised from sea-weeds. Its 

 earlier stages are unknown, and the opportunity is taken to call attention 

 to the absence of any collection of our knowledge of the earlier stages of 

 the Diptera. 



In a brief note from the same author to Entomologica Americana 

 (i, p. 229), the idea is advanced that in Cecidomyia tubicola, O.-Sacken, 

 the larval breast-bone is a spinning organ, and homologous with the 

 labium. 



