Jiine,igi/' Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 69 



eminent Rabbi of the A/Tiddle Ages wrote: "all kinds of venem- 

 ous animals, as serpents and scorpions." Still another Rabbi 

 laid stress upon the presence of winged scorpions, a peculiar ani- 

 mal in some ways like the unicorn, figuring much in literature 

 of all ages, but of which a specimen has never been found. Even 

 Pliny speaks of the winged scorpion as absolutely deadly. Eben 

 Ezra wrote : " all the wild beasts mingled in association, as lions, 

 bears and leopards." A Portuguese Rabbi said : " a mixture of 

 vermin." Dr. Geddes : " a swarm of beetles," but he at once 

 proved his own ignorance by describing the beetle, the Blatta 

 cogyptiaca, a voracious cockroach. Dr. T. M. Harris reviewed 

 the situation judicially and decided that one particular species was 

 meant, not a mixture of different animals. The septuagint settled 

 upon the kunontuia. Michaelis insisted on Tabanus. Dr. J. D. 

 Westwood, of Oxford, regarded it as Culex and argued his case. 

 A Smithsonian expert has chosen Hippobosca equina, and claimed 

 for the sebub of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah either Hcematopota 

 pluvialis or Chrysops coccutiens. The common Arabic word for 

 fly, simb, is not often quoted in evidence. Much, however, has 

 been written in claim of arob of zebub as the creature implied in 

 the word of an Ethiopian translation, which by the way still sur- 

 vives to describe a terrible gadfly, tsaltsalya. This has been 

 claimed to be the African fly alluded to in Isaiah, and has even 

 been identified as the tsetze fly, its author asserting that this 

 horse-killing parasite was known to the writer of Exodus. 



At all this farrago the author of Exodus might well be aston- 

 ished. He was a poet, not a' natural historian, wherefore his 

 allegory is all the more beautiful. 



A KEY TO THE SPECIES OF DICTYOPHARA GERM. 



By Edmund H. Gibson, U. S. Bureau of Entomology. 



The genus Dictyophara Germ, is represented in the United 

 States by four species, all of which are common east of the Rocky 

 Mountains and especially so in the south. However, they are 

 seldom observed or captured in large numbers, and although plant 

 feeders their exact economic status is not known. 



