ON A COLLECTION OF JAVANESE CRANE-FLIES (TIP- 

 ULIDAE, DIPTERA) IN THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL 

 MUSEUM. 



By Charles Paul Alexander, 



0/ the Entomological Laboratory of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The present paper is based on the extensive collections of insects 

 taken on the island of Java in 1909 by Messrs. Owen Bryant and 

 William Palmer. The crane-flies of this collection number about 150 

 specimens referable to some 60 species. 



There has been a great amount of work done upon the crane-fly 

 fauna of India and the East Indies in recent years and this has been 

 accomplished for the greater part by the following workers: 



Wiedemann in his Diptera exotica (1821) and Aussereuropaische 

 zweifliigelige Insekten (1828) characterized a number of Javan species. 

 His descriptions are excellent and very few of his species remain 

 unrecognized. Francis Walker described a very considerable num- 

 ber of species, since he had access to the immense collections of 

 the British Museum and William W. Saunders, the latter including 

 most of the material taken by Alfred RusseU Wallace in the Malay 

 Archipelago. DoleschaU (1856-1858) described a few species from 

 the Dutch East Indies. Van der Wulp up until his death in 1899 

 published a number of articles deahng w^ith the dipterous fauna of 

 Java; these papers contain splendid descriptions and often beauti- 

 fully colored figures by the author. 



The living workers include Brunetti whose recent volume on the 

 Diptera Nematocera of India (Fauna of British India, 1912) will do 

 much to stimulate the study of this order in that country. Ender- 

 lein, who has pubUshed one very valuable paper (1912), most of his 

 East Indian material being from Sumatra. Riedel in a short series 

 of articles (Supplementa Entomologica, No. 1, August, 1912; Ento- 

 mologische Mitteilungen, vol. 2, August, 1913), has worked over 

 Sauter's Formosan collections. Edwards has given some very valu- 

 able contributions to our knowledge of the Oriental and African 

 faunas; his most recent paper, a revision of the difficult genus 

 Styringomyia (1914) is especially helpful.- By far the most important 

 work on the crane-fhes of the island under consideration is that of 

 Doctor de Meijere who has pubhshed a long series of valuable articles 

 on the Dipterous fauna of Southeast Asia. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 49— No. 2103. 



157 



