344 



IClIXEUilONlD.i;. 



brought forward in a Aery scattered form in various English, 

 Dutch, German and Indian Magazines ; Avhile several of the types 

 that I had the opportunity of examining, both in the British 

 Museum and Col. Nurse's collections, bore MS. names in 

 Cameron's hand. Many of these species proved upon examination 

 to be conspecific with Pala^arctic forms, but I consider rather more 

 tlian seventy of them to represent good species, and these, Avith 

 those I have been enabled to synonymise with previously described 

 kinds and the fifty that do not appear to have been hitherto 

 noticed, give us a present total of some 163 species distributed 

 through 49 genera 



The Ophioxin.1; are at once known from all other Ichneu- 

 MONiD.E by their vei'y distinctly compressed abdomen, and can 

 only be confused with the Evaniid^ which emit the abdomen 

 from the disc of the metanotum and not, as iu tlie present case, 

 from its apex. In this character, however, the Anomalides tend 

 slightly from the normal by having the apex of the metathorax a 

 little produced above the abdominal base, and tliey may further be 

 known by their total lack of an areolet and spatuiately dilated hind 

 tarsi. The difficult tribe of Caaipoplegides also often lacks the 

 areolet, wliiidi appears rather the rule than the exception, for the 

 Ophionides go so far as to emit the second recurrent vein before 

 and not beyond the submarginal nervure, which abnormal con- 

 formation is shared by the Nototkachides, which are distinguished 

 by their calcaria. The Paniscides approach the Trtphoninje in 

 their peculiarly curved radial nervure, basally broad abdomen and 

 pectinate tarsal claws; though that they are also related to the 

 aberrant Mesochoeides, which tribe has recently been raised by 

 •Szepligeti to the position of a subfamily, I am now able to prove 

 by the discovery of an undoubted Pauiscid with a pronounced 

 Mesochorid facies. The tribes Cremastides and Pbistomeeides 

 are hardly distinct and differ only in the possession by the latter 

 of a more or less obvious tooth beneath the hind femora ; they 

 both have a large and conspicuous stigma, a featm-e shared by the 

 PoBizoNiDES, though in this case the radial cell is very broad, 

 with its central angle subacute and the submarginal nervure 

 obsolete, whereas in the two former tribes the radial cell is sub- 

 lanceolate and the submarginal elongate. Prof. Thomson was 

 of opinion that the Plectiscides appertained to the Tryphokin^ 

 rather than to the present subfamil}', but, as Schmiedeknecht truly 

 remarks, "as long as they are made to embrace an assemblage of 

 strongly differing forms, there can be no object in arguing wiiere 

 they are best placed ! " And, as regards India, we are spared the 

 trouble, for I have seen no more than three specimens thence, 

 which in the present inadequate state of our knowledge, it were 

 useless to bring forward yet. The following tribes are fully as 

 distinct inter se as are those of the Tryphonix-E, and specimens 

 can be attributed to each at a glance, w ith a little experience : — 



