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NOTES ON THE ANTSOMYIIBM OF NOETH AMERICA. 

 / BY E. H. MEADE. 



The American Antliomyiidce are very little known. Most of the 

 other families of American Diptera have been more or less completely 

 investigated, by Say, Loew, Osten-Sacken, and others ; but the only 

 entomologist who attempted to describe any of the American flies be- 

 longing to the genus Antlwmijia of Meigen, was the late F. Walker, 

 who, in his list of the Dlptera in the British Museum, and the " In- 

 secta Saundersiana," recorded a number of new species: his descrip- 

 tions, however, are so imperfect, that it is impossible to identify many 

 of the species without reference to the types. 



Last year, I received, through the kindness of Baron C. R. Osten- 

 Sacken, a considerable collection of North American AntJiomyiidcB, 

 from the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge, Mass., 

 with a request that I would examine and compare them with European 

 species : having done so, I have drawn up a few remarks upon the 

 results I obtained, which may be of some interest to British ento- 

 mologists. 



On looking over the collection, it struck me, in the first place, 

 that the number of species was small in propoi'tion to the number of 

 specimens ; and next, that the number of the s -aller and feebler 

 species was greater in proportion to that of the larger and more highly 

 developed forms, than occurs in Europe. I only determined 121 species 

 in the collection. There were few, if any, peculiar forms among 

 them ; they could all be arranged in the same genera, as the European 

 species ; they had the same sombre colours and ordinary foi-ms which 

 are so familiar to us ; and many of the common European kinds were 

 so closely represented, that it was difficult to say, in some instances, 

 whether they were exactly the same, or closely analogous species. 



I will briefly run over the different genera, following the arrange- 

 ment which I sketched out in vol. xi of this Magazine, pointing out 

 those species which seem common both to America and Europe, and 

 shortly alluding to some others that seem to call for especial notice. 



The genus Polietes, of which the well-known M. lardaria, Fabr., 

 is the principal species, is not represented in the collection. 



In the genus Hxetodesia (Aeicia, pt. Macq.), I determined seven 

 distinct species, several of which closely resemble European, as M. 

 lucorum, Fall., A. luqubris, Mgn., and A. ohscurata, Mgn., but none 

 of them, I think, are quite identical. 



