CAMPTOPELTA, A NEW GENUS OF STRATIOMYID^. 



S. W. WiLLISTON. 



During a vacation the past season in New Mexico I found 

 relief from monotony and much pleasure in renewing my 

 acquaintance with the Diptera, a study to which I have given 

 many years of my life, but which, perforce, has been inter- 

 rupted during the past eight years. During the months of 

 April and May I collected, almost daily, in the vicinity of 

 Socorro for my friend. Dr. Aldrich. The collecting region was, 

 for the most part, on the mesa near the foot of Mt. Socorro, and 

 occasionally along the "bosque" of the Rio Grande. The mesa 

 is a dry upland plain, with an altitude of about five thousand 

 feet, covered with mesquite, with numerous dry arroyas trav- 

 ersing it and leading into the mountains. As would be sus- 

 pected, its dipterous fauna consists chiefly of bombyliids and 

 asilids, with some dexiids and mydaids. Of the first of these 

 families I collected nearly forty species, and saw others that I 

 did not have the opportunity to capture. Syrphids, empids and 

 dolicopodids were few in number, as were the nematocerous 

 flies, with the exception of the Culicidas, which, after the 

 summer rains, occur in extraordinary numbers. Most of my 

 specimens came from the dry arroyas, very few indeed from 

 the level plains. 



The only stratiomyid I saw during the season was a single 

 specimen of a small species that I referred in the field to an 

 unknown genus. I searched for it afterward without success. 

 Rather curiously I took at the same time and place two spec- 

 imens of Epacmus willistoni O. S. that I never saw afterward. 



On a recent visit to Dr. Aldrich at La Fayette, my interest 

 in the stratiomyid was renewed. I can find no account of it in 

 recent literature, and venture to describe it as having some 

 features of peculiar interest. 



Camptopelta, genus new. 



Female. Bare. Front smooth, broad, convex, not narrowed above. 

 Ocelli equidistant. Antennse situated below middle of head, short. 

 First two joints short, the second broader than long; third joint (flagel- 

 lum) oval, composed of six segments; first segment longest, a little 



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