92 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [April, '20 



suggestive of a mold or fungus, but which closer examination 

 shows to be the product of certain slender yellowish white or 

 yellow larvae which are feeding upon the captured insects, 

 the froth-like mass being spun by those about to pupate, 

 usually on the upper surface of the accumulated insect remains. 

 Attention to this insect was first called (in 1909) by Dr. John 

 M. Macfarlane, who has so ably monographed the Sarra- 

 ceniaceae; at that time, in the Sarracenia-house of the Bo- 

 tanical Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania, the 

 presence of these insects occasioned some alarm for the safety 

 of the plants, until their feeding habits were determined; 

 subsequent observations in the field have resulted in the 

 discovery of this insect in the pitchers of S. sledgei in southern 

 Mississippi, m, sledgei and drummondii in southern Alabama, 

 in 6'. rubra and S. flava in North Carolina, and in 5. minor 

 and S. flava in South Carolina. Thus widely distributed, 

 and associated with every species of Sarracenia whose struc- 

 ture is favorable to its presence, this insect is probably, like 

 the associated Sarcophagid flies (Aldrich, Sarcophaga and 

 Allies in North America, Thomas Say Foundation, 1916, 

 pages 88, 89), exclusively a pitcher-plant insect; Dr. Johann- 

 sen has kindly determined that it belongs to an undescribed 

 species, in Pettey's key (Annals Ent. Soc. Am., XI, 319) 

 going with Neosciara coprophila and N. caldaria, from which 

 it is readily separable by the cf hypopygium, which in the 

 new species resembles that of jucunda (Johannsen's figure 

 123), though lacking the transverse row of setae, and in wing 

 venation having the petiole of the cubitus longer and R' 

 shorter than in jucunda; its description follows: 



Neosciara macfarlanei nov. sp. 



Egg. — Pear-shaped, .38 mm. long, .21 mm. greatest width; translucent, 

 polished, pale yellow; deposited on inner leaf wall above the insect re- 

 mains. 



Larva. — Of the usual Sciara form, with brownish-black chitinized head; 

 in color varying indi\'idually from yellowish white to rather bright yellow; 

 the dark contents of the digestive tract, in which insect fragments are 

 recognizable, showing through the translucent integument; segments 

 6, 7, 8, and 9 of almost uniform diameter, frbm these tapering somewhat 

 anteriorly and posteriorly; eight pairs of spiracles marked by minute pol- 



