GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF BRITISH WATERBUGS. 235 



MicRONECTA, Kirkaldy.* 



(= Sigara of some former authors.) 



Face convex in both sexes. No apparent stridular area on 

 anterior femora. False subovate, terminated by a powerful knife- 

 shaped claw (in the male), which is jointed with the pala and is 

 turned right back, in repose, into an excavation in the pala ; on 

 the pala there are only bristly hairs. ^ In the female the palse 

 are elongate cultrate. A character separating this genus from 

 all the other British genera is that the metapleura are simple, 

 while in the others they are deeply impressed posteriorly, so 

 deeply in fact that Fieber mistook the impression for a true 

 suture, and termed the posterior lobes the " parapleura." The 

 venation of the wings is also much simpler. 



Little is known of the habits of Micronecta beyond the fact 

 that it stridulates. F. B. White states that it hybernates in the 

 nymphal instars t ; and Westwood I has described M. ovivora 

 (as a Gorixa) from the Canara River, Madras, naming it from 

 its supposed destructive habits of devouring fish ova. 



There are two British species : — 



1. Length, 1^-2 mill. ; pronotum nearly as long as 



vertex ; the lateral margins of the former longer 



than half the posterior margin of an eye (1) minutissima (L.). 



2. Length, 2-2^ mill. ; pronotum much shorter than 



the vertex ; lateral margins of the former scarcely 



perceptible ..... (2) scholtzii (Scholtz). 



1. M. MiNUTissiMA (Linne). 



This species is the Notonecta minutissima of Linne, the Sigara 

 miimta of Fabricius, and the S. lemana of Fieber. A slight 

 variety is the S. poiveri of Douglas and Scott. It is figured by 

 Douglas and Scott, by Saunders, bv Herrich-Schaeffer (1850, 

 Wanz. Ins. ix. pi. 295, f. 907), and by Fieber (1845, " Entomo- 

 logische Monographien " in Abh. bohm. Ges. Wiss. (5) 3, pi. 1, 

 ligs. 11-19). Further figures may be found in Duda's " Analy- 

 ticky prehled ceskych plostic vodnich " in Klubu prirodov. Praze 

 1890 (1891), fig. 6 (on p. 30). 



Distributed from Hastings to Braemar and Norfolk to Ireland. 

 It is not uncommon in the south of Surrey. 



2. M. SCHOLTZII, Scholtz. 



This is the S. meridionalis, Costa, 1860, of Futon's 'Cata- 

 logue ' ; it was also fully described the same year — whether 



'■'•' Greek viikros, small ; nektes, a swimmer. Sec ' Entomologist,' 

 1897, 260. 



t " Notes on Gorixa'' in Ent. Mo. Mag. x. 80 (1873). 

 I Proc. Ent. Soc. Lond. 1871, p. iv. 



