Accntropus. 137 



1865, Heinemann described the female of the Acentropus 

 from the Bodensee (Lake of Constance) as having very 

 short pointed rudiments of wings. And in 187 1, Ritsema 

 bred from a pupa found near Haarlem a female with 

 rudimentary wings. 



In 1859, Hagen remarked, '^it is a matter of interest 

 that it appears to have two forms of female, one with 

 short, the other with long upper- wings ; of both forms, 

 Stainton's and Stephens' collections contained speci- 

 mens." I suppose the ''form with short wings," refers 

 to the specimens with rudimentary wings, captured by 

 Curtis and Dale at Glanville's Wootton : for so far as I 

 can gather, the Dorsetshire specimens are the only known 

 British specimens that have rudimentary wings, and 

 Brown's Burton specimens are the only known specimens 

 that are absolutely apterous. The female specimens in 

 Stainton's collection are all fully winged, and as Stephens 

 died in 1852, before the apterous form was discovered, 

 I fancy that Hagen, writing from memory, must have 

 erroneously attributed to Stainton's and Stephens' col- 

 lections what he actually saw in Curtis's. Stephens' 

 collection is now incorporated with the general collection 

 of British insects in the British Museum, and Acentropus 

 has been transferred from Neuroptera to Lepidoptera ; 

 that collection contains four females of Aceiitropus, but 

 all are fully- winged.* In addition to the British Museum 

 and Stainton's collections, I have been permitted to 

 examine those of Bond, Boyd, Knaggs, M'Lachlan, 

 Stevens and Wormald ; they contain none but fully 

 winged females ; in short, I have been unable, in any of 

 the London collections, to procure a sight of the apterous 

 or partially apterous form ; and Westwood does not 

 possess it at Oxford. Dale (m litt.) described his rudi- 

 mentary female, as "rather shrivelled, and I should say 

 was merely undeveloped ; " and Nolcken was at first dis- 

 posed to think that the rudimentary wings were attribu- 

 table to accidental crippling, and were merely cases of 

 stunted growth : but Brown, though at first surprised to 

 see an apterous specimen, says that " it was subsequently 



* M'Laclalan assures me that he remembers to have formerly seeu an 

 apterous, or nearly apterous, female of Acentropus in the British Museum, 

 thus corroborating Hagen. I made two visits to the Museum last autumn 

 in order to see it, but it was not to be found. 



