LOCALITIES. 51 



Wales. Since then no definite record has been sent of infestation in 

 other districts until in the past summer I received a plentiful supply 

 of specimens from Dr. D. Thomas, Medical Officer of Health of the 

 Pontardawe Kural District Council in Glamorganshire, with informa- 

 tion of the flies bemg a troublesome infestation in a district of which 

 various places were named lying some miles in a westerly and northerly 

 direction beyond Neath. 



The first communication was sent me on August 17th by Dr. D. 

 Thomas, from Tyr-waun, Ystalyfera, Glamorganshire, as follows : — 



"I take the liberty of asking your opinion on the enclosed speci- 

 mens of what are known in this district as ' Forest Flies.' They are 

 a perfect terror to horses, — some animals becoming quite beyond 

 control. Fortunately, according to my experience, they are not very 

 frequently met with. I have generally found them in the parish of 

 Ystradgynlais, in Breconshire, among hillside farms, where there is 

 plenty of scrubby timber." — (D. T.) 



The specimens sent proved beyond doubt to be Hippobosca equina, 

 Linn., and on mentioning to Dr. Thomas that (the matter being of 

 much interest) I should be very glad of a few more, he wrote me, on 

 August 20th, that the next time he was in the locality he would do all 

 he could to procure additional specimens ; also he remarked : "I only 

 wish I could extirpate the whole tribe, for a more terrible nuisance to 

 some horses I have never known." 



About three weeks later (on September 9th), Dr. Thomas forwarded 

 me six or seven more specimens, which, on examination, all proved to 

 be of H. equina, with the observation : " I am able to send you to-day 

 a few more ' Forest Flies,' and being alive I have put them in a 

 match-box. These were caught on a hillside farm near Crynant 

 Village, about four miles from Neath, Glamorganshire. It is getting 

 a little late in the season, but next year, if you should require any 

 more, I dare say you can have any quantity of them." 



The specimens sent me I shared with Mr. 0. E. Janson, F.E.S., 

 as I was desirous that examples of presence of H. equina in this 

 previously unrecorded locality should be in the collections of a well- 

 known entomologist, as well as in my own ; and subsequently Mr. 

 Ernest E. Austen, of the Zoological Department of the British Museum 

 of Natural History, South Kensington, wrote me that, through the 

 courtesy of Dr. D. Thomas, he also had received a supply of specimens 

 for the collections in the British Museum, so that the presence of this 

 truly undesirable horse and cattle pest, Hippobosca equina, Linn., in 

 the south of South Wales is now thoroughly recorded. 



In a geographical point of view it may be worth remark that all 

 the localities of Forest Fly (that is, of U. equina) that we are at 

 present acquainted with in this country are not far from the sea. The 



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