92 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



through the tall flags and thick underwood which fringes a 

 portion of the island of Roda for the chance of a cast of the 

 net. The colour of the body was lavender-blue, like that of the 

 male of L. depressa, but in size it exceeded ^schna grandis or 

 Anax im'perator, and was the largest species of any Neuroptera 

 that I have ever seen alive. 



My visit to Athens and its neighbourhood in the latter end 

 of May and beginning of June, 1882, must also be mentioned, 

 as I then captured two species of Neuroptera, differing from 

 dragonflies, being either the perfect insects of the ant-lion, or 

 else allied to these last. The smaller and by far the commoner 

 of the two had brown-spotted and gauzy fore wings, and the 

 hinder wings much elongated and very slender, in the shape of 

 tails. It abounded everywhere, in the pass of Daphne, the 

 Stadium, Mount Lycabettus, &c., and was especially plentiful 

 on the hill of the Acropolis, in the immediate vicinity of the 

 Parthenon, where the grass was alive with its numbers. Its name 

 is Nemoptera coa. I find the nomenclature of the Neuroptera in the 

 National Collection very defective and unsatisfactory for anyone, 

 like myself, wishing to compare and name specimens. Palpares 

 lihelluloides is a rarer and much larger insect. I captured it 

 in the pass of Daphne, and on the hill-side near the Throne of 

 Xerxes. Its name, libelluloides, is, of course, to be attributed to 

 the fact that in the wide spread of its wings and brown spots 

 upon them it resembles some of the Libellulidse, Libellula 

 quadrimaculata in particular. 



I obtained a single specimen of a third kind, viz., Myrmeleon 

 scevus, in the vicinity of Belgrade. This last bears a superficial 

 resemblance to the genus Agrion. All these perfect insects of 

 the ant-lion, or those akin to them, have a slow, feeble, and 

 wavering flight. 



The rare occurrence of brooks and streams, and likewise the 

 fact that so few of the winter torrents are perennial in their 

 flow, may possibly serve to account, to some extent, for the 

 paucity of species of Neuroptera so noticeable in the East. 



Among Hymenoptera may be mentioned a well-known 

 continental species, Xylocopa violacea, from the Pass of Daphne, 

 in May, 1882, and two kinds of hornets ; the one, our own 

 Vespa crahro from the tombs of the Maccabees, in March, and 

 also occurring at Ephesus, Philadelphia, and the River Meles, in 



