172 PERCY SLADEN TRUST EXPEDITION 



Mah^ ; I have examined four males and two females, mainly from near Morne Blanc at 

 an altitude of about a thousand feet, in October and November, 1908 ; but also from the 

 slopes of Morne Seychellois, at least five hundred feet higher, early in February, 1909. 

 Silhouette ; a single male of the minimum size was secured at Mare aux Cochons during 

 September, 1908. 



PoLYSPHlNCTA Gravenhorst, Ichn. Europ. iii (1829), 112. 



6. Polysphincta bohemani, Holmgren. 



Polysphincta bohemani Holmgr., Sv. Ak. Handl. 1860, n. 10, p. 30; Thomson, Opusc. 

 Ent. xii. 1253 et xix. 2128 ; Mori., Ichn. Brit. iii. 128, ^?. 



Var. tropicus, var. nov. I cannot consider this more than a form of Holmgren's 

 species, with which it agrees in every particular except in having the rufescent colouration 

 replaced by testaceous, the mesonotal lobes subinfuscate and the disc less scabrous than in 

 the typical form. 



It is interesting to find a female and two males of this palsearctic species in the 

 Indian Ocean, though the genus is known to exist in peculiar forms in Ceylon. The 

 present individuals were doubtless introduced, with the Araneidea upon which the whole 

 genus has for long been known to prey ; the examples I have examined were captured 

 upon the marshy plateaux at Mare aux Cochons and elsewhere on Silhouette in August, 

 1908, and at an altitude of over eight hundred feet at the Cascade Estate on Mahe about 

 four months later. 



Subfamily Tryphoninse. 



Orthocentrus Gravenhorst, Ichn. Europ. iii (1829), 358; Thomson, Opusc. Ent. 



xxii. 2423. 



7. Orthocentrus protuberans, Holmgren. 



Orthocentrus protuberans Holmgr., Sv. Ak. Handl. 1855, p. 333 ; Thomson, Opusc. 

 Ent. xxii. 2429 ; cf. Roman, Nat. Unt. Sarek. iv. 352. O. insularis Ashm., Journ. Linn. 

 Soc. Zool. XXV. 1894, p. 142. 



Var. deletus, var. nov. Agreeing in every way with the typical description of authors 

 (Mori. Ichn. Brit. iv. 62), except in having the basal nervure continuous through the 

 median, the metathoracic costulse entire, the sternum testaceous and the areolet entirely 

 wanting. 



O. protuberans is usually regarded as a subarctic species, occurring in the northern 

 latitudes of America (whence Ashmead described the synonymous 0. insularis in 1894), 

 Europe and Asia, extending to France and Austria. I can, however, discover nothing 

 but the above points of divergence between typical examples of this species in my 

 collection and four females, captured on Mahe and in Silhouette ; those from the latter 

 were obtained in the high forest above Mai-e aux Cochons on 2nd September, 1908, and 

 that from the former at the Cascade Estate during the following January, at an altitude 

 of some thousand feet. 



