attracted by the Odour of Flowers, 239 



is quite impossible to determine. Its occurreace at all in 

 such company is difficult to understand, unless it had visited 

 the flower as it would visit any other, since the Tachininae 

 are met with on flowers and leaves, and are not necrophagous ; 

 their larvae are well known as internal parasites of caterpillars 

 and other insects. 



I am not aware that Musca domestica, L., has hitherto 

 been recorded from Trinidad, though the species is known 

 to occur in Brazil and in Porto liico and Guadeloupe in the 

 Antilles. I have nowhere seen it in such swarms as in a 

 house about two miles from Pard. It is probable that this 

 species is now cosmopolitan, having been carried by ships all 

 over the civilized world. 



The specimens of Sarcophaga are in so hopeless a con- 

 dition that it would be tutile to attempt to determine the 

 species, which, however, belongs to the group without 

 dorso-central bristles. The median of the three stripes on 

 the thorax has a distinct narrow dark line on each side of it, 

 the face and orbits are golden, the hypopygium of the male 

 and the anus of the female orange-red, and the middle and 

 hind tibi» of the male are clotiied on the inside with long 

 hair. 



Ophyra cenescens was described by Wiedemann (Auss. 

 zweifl. Insekten, ii. p. 435. 29) from New Orleans and has 

 been recorded by Macquart (Dipt. Exot. 1^'' 8uppl. p. 203.4) 

 from Galveston, Texas. 1 may add that Schiner (' Fauna 

 Austriaca,' Diptera, i. p. 620) mentions that he once found 

 the European Ophyra anthrax^ ^^o-i i"^ countless numbers 

 round a dead horse. 



ISo far as I have been able to discover, no instance of necro- 

 phagous Diptera being attracted by malodorous flowers has 

 as yet been recorded from the New World. The late Mr. C V. 

 Kiley found the larva of a Sarcophaga feeding on the putrid 

 insect-remains in tlie pitchers of two species of insectivorous 

 plants — the spotted trumpet-leaf {Sarracenia variolaris, 

 Michx.) and the yellow trumpet-leaf {S. Jiava, h.). Riley 

 described the fly as Sarcojjhaga sarracenicey but afterwards 

 thought that it might be only a variety of the common 

 European S. carnaria, L.* Here, however, the dead insects 

 and not the flower itself had formed the attraction. But in 

 the Old World several cases similar to the present have been 

 described. M. Schnetzler, writing " On the part played by 



* Riley, Trans. St. Louis Acad, of Nat. Sci. iii. p. 239 ; ' Science 

 Gossip,' 1874, pp. 274-275, tig. 182 ; Canad. Eut. vi. pp. 209-214, tig. 26 ; 

 Seventii Ann. Kep. Ins. State of Missouri, 1875, p. 181. 



