Neuropterous genus Ascalaphus. 5 
An excellent memoir on the transformations of Asca- 
laphus macaronius, Scop. (A. hungaricus, Rambur) and 
Myrmeleon tetragrammicus, by Dr. F. Brauer, was pub- 
lished in the ‘Proceedings’ of the k. k. Zoologisch- 
Botanischen Gesellschaft in Wien, vol. iv. (1854), p. 462, 
with three plates, the first of which is devoted to the 
internal anatomy of the imago of the Ascalaphus, the 
second to the illustration of the transformations, and 
the third to the larva of Myrmeleon tetragrammicus and 
M. (Palpares) libelluloides. The female of the Ascala- 
phus lays from forty to fifty eggs in two parallel rows on 
a twig at the end of July. The eggs are about a milli- 
metre long, and are deposited so that their longitudinal 
diameter is nearly horizontal. They are of an oval 
form, and of a reddish yellow colour, with a dark ring 
near the broadest end (fig. 8, copied from Brauer). It 
is in the direction of this ring that the embryo larva 
makes its escape, the head being thrown backwards and 
lying upon the back. The body of the very young larva 
is nearly circular, serrated laterally, the head before 
hatching lying on its breast, but subsequently porrected ; 
each of the mandibles is armed, besides the three 
ordinary teeth common to the larve of the family, on 
each edge with five or six obtuse points, nearly equal in 
length to the width of the jaw, each arising from a 
small lateral tubercle; each palpus arises from a large 
oval basal joint, followed by three smaller joints, and 
furnished with several (four) strong sete, dilated at the 
end, similar to the sete arising among the ocelli, of 
which there are six on each side resting on a short 
peduncular process. The mesothoracic segment is twice 
the width of the prothorax, with each of its lateral 
angles produced into a projecting setose point; and 
there are twelve lateral setose tubercles extending along 
each side of the body, the extremity of which is semi- 
oval or conic-ovate, and armed laterally with curved 
obtuse sete. The upper surface of the abdominal 
segments is marked with small black spots (about four- 
teen on each, ten of them being disposed in transverse 
rows across the joints). 
In the third of his plates Dr. Brauer has figured a 
larva of Myrmeleon as that of M. tetragrammicus, Pall., 
which he regards as identical with the species described 
by Bonnet and figured by Reaumur, which had been 
