SAND-FLIES FROM PERADENTYA, \ OT 
“SAND-FLIES ’”’ (PHLEBOTOMUS) FROM PERADENIYA. 
By N. ANNANDALE, D.Sc., F.A.S.B., 
Superintendent, Indian Museum. 
(With seven Text Figures.) 
LIES of at least three families are commonly known in the 
East as sand-flies, viz., of the Chironomid or true midges 
(Ceratopogon and its allies), the Simuliide (Simulium, known as the 
“potu”’ fly in the Himalayas), and the Psychodide, which are 
commonly called moth-flies on account of their relatively large hairy 
or scaly wings. The only genus of moth-flies that habitually sucks 
blood has received the appropriate name Phlebotomus, and includes 
the species most frequently called sand-flies, at any rate in the 
plains of India. 
Much evidence has lately been obtained by Grassi* and by the 
Austrian doctors Doerr, Franz, and Taussig + that fever of a type 
common in the Kast,{ and known by various local names, is trans- 
mitted from man to man in the countries round the Mediterranean 
by Phlebotomus papatasi, a species which occurs in northern India, 
and also probably in Java. It is therefore important, not only 
from an entomological point of view, that the distribution of flies 
of the genus should be carefully studied. They may easily be 
recognized by their narrow, pointed, hairy wings, which are held in 
a Semi-erect position when the animal is at rest, by their silvery 
sheen, and long slender legs. In general appearance and structure 
they are not unlike minute mosquitoes. The adults fly to light at 
night and rest during the day in dark corners in damp places, often 
in bathrooms. They have the unpleasant habit of biting one’s 
ankles under the dinner table in the evening, and are said to crawl 
through mosquito nets and under bed clothes for a similar purpose. 
The larve§ are peculiar little maggots with four very long bristles 
at their posterior extremity, and are found on the walls of latrines, 
among damp moss on stones, in damp earth, and probably in other 
situations abounding in moisture, but not actually aquatic. 
Specimens of the flies are best preserved in small tubes of spirit, 
but dried specimens packed not too tightly with tissue paper (nof 

* Mem. Soc. Ital. Sci. (iii.), XTV., p. 353 (1907). 
+ Das Pappatacifieber (Leipzig and Vienna, 1909). 
{ See Wimberley, Ind. Med. Gazette, XLV., No. 8, p. 281 (1910). 
§ See Howlett’s figure in Maxwell-Lefroy’s ‘‘ Indian Insect Life,” p. 559 
(fig. 158). 
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