SCIENCE BULLETIN No. 3. 



The females deposit their spindle-shaped brown or black eggs in masses 

 upon the foliage of plants growing on flat, swampy land, or round the edges 

 of lagoons and water-holes. According to Professor J. S. Hine, several 

 species in the United States hatch out in nine days. The larvae live in wet 

 soil, under rotten logs, or stones, and sometimes even in the water, where 

 they feed upon all kinds of small creatures. Professor Hine reared them 

 very easily in jars of moist earth, supplied with chopped-up worms. After 

 pupating, they remained in the dormant state till the following spring, so 

 that their life history occupied about eleven months. 



The larvae are elongate, eleven -jointed maggots, each segment encircled 

 with a row of fleshy tubercles, very well defined on the ventral surface. 



Nothing is known regarding the life-history of any of our Australian 

 species, and there is a wide field for investigation in studying the earlier 

 stages of our biting flies. 



In other parts of the world a great deal of attention has been given to the 

 range and life-histories of Tabanid flies, since it has been proved that several 

 species transmit, when biting, the blood parasites of man and domesticated 

 animals, causing some of the most deadly tropical diseases. In most of the 

 tropical agricultural experiment stations the entomologists are devoting 

 much of their time to the study of these flies. At the Agricultural Kesearch 

 Laboratories at Pusa, India, Mr. ITowlett was specially engaged to work 

 on these flies; and at Cairo, the Soudan, and other stations in tropical 

 Africa, work is being carried out to find the distribution of these insects. 

 In the laboratories of the Tropical School of Medicine at Liverpool, 

 Mr. Newstead is tabulating the collections received from all parts of the 

 world. 



Mr. Austen, of the British Museum, has issued two works, one dealing 

 with the " Tse-tse Flies of Africa," and the second with the biting flies of 

 Great Britain. Miss Ormerod had previously, in her " Annual Reports on 

 Injurious Insects," devoted many pages to them. All over the world col- 

 lectors are on the lookout for flies belonging to this family, on account of 

 the important role they play in economic entomology. 



Through the publication of Part III of Dr. Kertesz's " Catalogus Dip- 

 terorum," 1908, we are now enabled to obtain some idea of the number of 

 species that have been described, and the countries in which they are found. 

 It is very unfortunate that so many of the Australian species have been 

 described with no other locality attached except " New Holland " or 

 " Australia." It is therefore only by collecting specimens, with authentic 

 locality labels attached, and by sending duplicates to specialists where the 

 original type specimens are kept and having them determined, that we can 

 obtain any idea of the range of our indigenous species of biting flies. 



The writer proposes to give some notes on the species known to him, some 

 of which are figured in the accompanying plate, and a list of species 

 described from Australia. 



The genus Pangonia contains a number of large, handsome flies, found 

 in open forest country, often resting upon the trunks of trees. The mem- 

 bers of this genus have a world-wide range, and about twenty species have 



