238 Mr, E. E. Austen on Necrophagous Diptera 



is yellow or orange. The larger of the two species appears 

 to be closely allied to, if not actually conspecific with, a 

 specimen from Mexico {ex Coll. Saunders), placed in the 

 Museum collection under Musca, and labelled ^\femorata,W.,^^ 

 in Walker's handwriting — therefore presumably a type. I 

 have, however, failed to discover where this species was 

 described. Moreover, the Museum collection already contains 

 undetermined specimens of both of the Trinidad species of 

 Lucilia from the Amazon, collected by Bates. I did not 

 myself meet with either during a recent expedition to the 

 Lower Amazon, but no doubt the species are widely distri- 

 buted in the Neotropical Eegion. 



Gompsomyia tnacellaria, F., the most numerously repre- 

 sented species in the above list, is also the most interesting, 

 since its larv?e, known as " screw-worms " in the south and 

 west of the United States, besides attacking various domestic 

 animals, have frequently caused death in the human subject 

 by their ravages in the nasal fossse and frontal sinuses *. 

 For this reason the species was described by Coquerel f as 

 Lucilia hominivorax, from specimens bred from larvai the 

 attacks of which had proved fatal to a French convict in 

 Cayenne. According to one of Dr. Coquerel's informants 

 similar cases are pretty common among the French convicts 

 in Guiana, and an instance of non-fatal attack has been 

 reported from Trinidad itself %. P. S. de Magalhaes, in 

 recording the fly as having been bred from larvje from the 

 nasal fossee of the human subject at Rio de Janeiro, points 

 out § the wide distribution of the species, which ranges from 

 the Argentine and Chili to the southern United States of 

 North America. I myself met with it on the Amazon and 

 the Para River. 



The solitary Tachininid sent is a mere fragment, which it 



• Cf. Ami. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 5, vol. xii. (1883) pp. 353-355. 



t Ann. Soc. Ent. Fr. ser. 3, t. tI. (1858), pp. 171-176. See also 

 Coquerel, Ann. Soc. £nt. Fr. ser. 3, t. vii. pp. 233-237 : " Nouveau cas 

 de Mort produit par la Lucilia hominivurax, et description de la larve de 

 ce Diptere." 



X Vide ' Trinidad Field Naturalists' Club,' vol. i. no. 3, Aug. 1892, 

 pp. 69-Gl. See also a paper entitled " The Cattle Fly, Compsomyia 

 macellaria," by C. W. Meaden {ibid. vol. ii. no. 11, Dec. 1895, pp. 279- 

 281), dealing with the presence of the larvae in sore places on cattle. 

 The author states that he has never observed the fly on dead animals : 

 this is curious, as at Mosqueiro, on the Paia lliver, I took it on a dead 

 kid. Jrom " Observations on the Insects of Jamaica," by William Jones 

 (Journ. Institute of Jamaica, vol. i. no. 8, Dec. 1893, p. 372), it would 

 appear that attacks by this fly on human beings are common enough in 

 Jamaica, or, at any rate, were so in the earlier part of this centurv. 



§ Bull. Soc. Zool. France, t. xx., 1896, p. 117. 



i 



