250 



THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



the exception in tins group. Meriania argentifera, Meig., is, 

 however, more than usually clearly defined, and is rather a fine 

 insect, as will be judged from Mr. Lucas's drawing. 



The genus Meriania was founded by Eobineau Desvoidy, or 

 rather the name was created by him, in his ' Essai sur les 

 Myodaires,' 1830. Whether his names should ever be adopted 

 at all is a question, and how they are ever identified with any- 

 thing is a wonder to me. He monographed the whole of the big 

 family of Muscidcs {sens, lat.), and only very occasionally deigned 

 to notice anyone else's work. He renamed everything, genera 

 and species alike ; he split up genera and species so that in 

 many cases a genus represented a species, and was of the value 

 of a species only, and the included species were only the various 

 sexes and forms of the one species ; and he characterized all so 

 feebly that they seem to me quite unrecognizable, as a rule. 

 However, Brauer and von Bergenstamm, in their ' Vorarbeiten 

 zu einer Monographie der Muscaria Schizometopa (exclusive 

 Anthomyiidae),' the most important work on the Tachinidae yet 

 published, revive his name Meriania for this genus. Brauer and 

 Bergenstamm give argentifera, Meig., as the type. Of the three 

 species (all new names) placed by Eobineau Desvoidy in his genus, 

 however, silvatica and horealis are both definitely identified with 

 puparum, F,, by Macquart in the ' Annales de la Soc. Entom. de 

 France,' 1848, p. 122 ; and the other one is a Cape species ; so 

 that it seems to me that puparum, F., should be the typical 

 species, and argentifera cannot be, as it was not in the original 

 genus at all. 



Eondani, in his * DipterologifB Italicse Prodromus,' vol. i., 

 p. 64, and vol. iii., p. 74, creates a genus Platychira, quoting 

 pupa7'um, F., as the tj^pe, and including other species — radicmn, 

 F., strenua, Meig., &c. — which are now recognized as abundantly 

 distinct. This genus was constituted practically in the same 

 manner as the genus afterwards familiar as Nemorcea, and as it 

 is cotypical with Meriania, E.D., the name must go at once as 

 a useless synonym. 



Schiner, Macquart, Verrall (in his first * List of British Di- 

 ptera '), and others recognized a big genus, Nemorcea (another 

 name of Eobineau Desvoidy, is used, however, in a much wider 

 sense than he intended), and merged puparum into it. The name 

 by which it is familarly known, therefore, is Nemorcea puparum. 

 This genus contained a number of closely allied common species 

 distinct from puparum ; and that species, together with its close 

 ally argentifera, always formed a section apart, distinguished at 

 once from all the others by their hairy cheeks. Finally, Brauer 

 and Bergenstamm, in the work already referred to, showed how 

 different they were, and removed them not only to another genus, 

 for which the name Platychira, Edi., was first adopted (part i., 

 p. 86), afterwards changed to Meriania, E. D. (part iii., p. 112), 



