482 Mr. W. S. MacLeay on Ceratitis Citriperda. 



description of what I had observed, without inventing a number of new 

 terms, which, to me at least, is a most odious office. As I understood 

 that such terms were soon about to be proposed to the scientific world, I 

 was induced to wait for their publication, and to let my drawings and ob- 

 servations of the above fly to lie at rest for a while in my portfolio, toge- 

 ther with a paper on the wings of Diptera, which had been read to the 

 Zoological Club of the Linnean Society. As, however, I find myself 

 remaining in much the same state of inability to describe what I have 

 observed, and that there is still sufficient room left for my lucubrations, I 

 shall transmit to you, from time to time, a rather extensive series of re- 

 marks on the above order of insects. For the present I request you merely 

 to let naturalists be aware of the existence of such an insect as Ceratitis 

 Citriperda, the male of which is most remarkable in an entomological 

 point of view, for having two clavate subarticulate horns planted be- 

 tween the eyes, so as to make the insect appear provided with two ano- 

 malous antennae in addition to its regular pair. The female is without 

 these singular appendages. Ceratitis is a genus that differs from Tephri- 

 tis in the nervures of the wings, as well as in the above remarkable struc- 

 ture of the male, which, by the bye, does not appear to have been no- 

 ticed by M. Cattoire. The colour of the eyes, when alive, is brilliantly 

 metallic, as in most of the TephritidcB, but being violet, is exquisitely 

 beautiful, and different from the hue of the eyes in any other dipterous 

 insect I have seen. I shall give you the characters of this genus at length 

 in a future paper, where I shall enter more deeply into the subject of the 

 little understood order of Diptera. 



Yours ever most truly, 



W. S. MacLeay. 



