BY W. R. COLLEDGE. 12B 



garded with suspicion. But the one I refer to is of a blame- 

 less character, and probably the whole of the group to 

 which it belongs are hkewise harmless to humankind. 

 They belong to the genus Megarrhina (R. Desvoidy), and 

 are distinguished from others by their generally large size, 

 brilliant coloration, peculiar shape of proboscis, and the 

 possession of a caudal fan. Tropical and subtropical regions 

 are their homes. Giles in his book enumerates fifteen species. 

 They have been found in the Argentine, Brazil, Sikkim 

 and Central Asia, Java, Batavia, Island of Formosa. AKred 

 Wallace notes them from Singapore, tlie Celebes Islands,. 

 New Guinea and Queensland. So far only one of the species- 

 has been reported from this State. They range from 

 Thursday Island, Port Denison. Mr. Tryon found them 

 on Percy Island, Dr. Bancroft at Caboolture ; and I 

 have got larva from North Pine and Milton. 



Sufficient material to make complete dissections of 

 all parts of the body have not been available, but the little 

 I have done is both interesting and instructive. This 

 particular species was called Megarrhina speciosa, but 

 Mr. Theobald, the authority at the British Museum on 

 the Diptera, has rechristened it Toxorynchites speciosa, 

 so that it is now known by that name. 



On the 8th March, 1910, Dr. Parry (whose recent 

 decease we greatly lament) brought down to me a living 

 female specimen caught ten miles from Brisbane. This 

 was the first living one I had seen. The next night it 

 deposited on the water in its prison house a few eggs. These 

 were laid, not in a raft like the house mosquito, but sep- 

 arately on the water. They are oval, measuring the 5<>th 

 of an inch in length by the 42nd in breadth. The micro- 

 pyle is at the centre of one end, and the shell splits cen- 

 trally through its long axis for the emergence of the lai-va. 

 The eggs are pale in colour, do not darken by exposure 

 to the air, like some species, and the surface is finely granu- 

 lated. In two days they hatched, and the larva, pale and 

 transparent, lay on the surface of the water. I thought 

 from their appearance and absence of motion that they 

 were cast off skins, until on touching one with the point 

 of a needle, it gave a twitch, and I found that they were 

 the new born larva of this particular species. 



The larva of many species are characteristic, so that 



