178 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. ° 
carrion? The flies I saw were almost all of the male sex; out 
of fifty which I captured only two or three were females. 
After leaving Buckingham I stayed for several days in a 
retired country parsonage within the borders of Oxfordshire, and 
I found the garden, shrubbery, and immediately surrounding 
country very rich in rare and interesting species of Anthomyiide. 
A dry enumeration of the names of those which I captured would 
be of little interest, so I will only mention those which are 
particularly rare, or peculiar in their habits. 
Under a large standard apple tree in the kitchen garden 
I noticed, on a sunny day following a wet morning, a number of 
Homalomyias performing a joyous aérial dance, such as all the 
flies belonging to this genus are fond of doing. Upon watching 
them I observed that they were of three distinct kinds and sizes ; 
some were small and grey in colour, others rather larger and 
blacker ; and, darting between these, and glistening in the stray 
beams of sunshine which stole through the leaves of the tree, 
were a few individuals of a still larger size and brighter colour 
sporting with the rest. I captured one or two of each kind with 
my forceps, and found them to be H. canicularis, Lin., H. scalaris, 
Men., and H. aprica, Hal. The two former are common every- 
where indoors and out, but the last, which is the largest species in 
the genus, must be considered rather rare, though it is widely dis- 
tributed. ‘The interest here attaches to the circumstance that 
three distinct species were sporting and associating together. Is 
this usual? As I believe is always the case, the flies performing 
this dance were all males. 
Pyezura pardalina.—On a shrub in the garden I captured a rare 
Dipteron closely allied to the Homalomyias, but placed in a separate 
genus by its discoverer, Prof. Rondani, who named it P. pardalina. 
It differs from the Homalomyias by having a plumose instead of a 
bare arista on the antennse. This little fly has hitherto only been 
recorded as a native of Italy, not being mentioned in any of the 
works I have seen on the Diptera of France, Germany, or 
Scandinavia, as well as England. I am sorry to say I only found 
a single male specimen, though I carefully searched for others. 
Hyetodesia (Aricia) abdominalis, Zett., and Hydrostea velutina, 
Desy.—I will only mention these two other Anthomyids, both of 
which I found. Both are rare; the former is recorded by Walker 
as British, but I had not previously seen it; the latter has not been 
