106 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol.X 



MECAPTERA OF THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES.* 



By Geo. P. Engelhardt, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



My reason for presenting a paper on the Order Mecaptera, 

 comprising the single family Panorpidte — commonly known as 

 " Scorpion-flies "■ — emanates from the capture last summer of 

 several specimens of an exceedingly interesting as well as curious 

 member of this order which found me in doubt as to its identity. 

 Before dealing with this particular capture it seems not out of 

 place to review briefly the several groups of Panorpidse as repre- 

 sented in this part of the United States. Not very many species 

 will have to be considered. 



While most of the textbooks on North American insects place 

 the Mecaptera as a sub-order of the Neuroptera, there is a tend- 

 ency to give them ordinal rank, as has been done by the late Dr. 

 John B. Smith in his last report on the " Insects of New Jersey," 

 where he expresses his belief that the Mecaptera are the ancestral 

 types from which the Hymenoptera and Diptera have developed. 



In our region the order is represented by four genera, which 

 show a striking similarity between the species of each genus, but 

 also a dissimilarity, equally striking, between each of the genera. 

 The first genus, Panorpa, contains insects, fairly large, with slender 

 body, and narrow, net-veined wings, of normal aspect, excepting 

 for a curious abdominal appendage, peculiar to the males, which 

 ends in a forceps and is carried curved upward ; in the second genus 

 Boreus we have rather diminutive insects, scarcely reaching ^ 

 inch in length with the wings in the males rudimentary and in the 

 females entirely absent; the third genus Bittacus includes the 

 largest members of the family with body, wings and legs remark- 

 ably long and slender, giving them a close resemblance to the 

 Tipulidse, or so-called Craneflies, of the order Diptera ; the single 

 species of the fourth and last genus Merope strongly suggests a 

 cockroach, were it not for the forceps-like appendage of the male^ 

 which suggests an earwig. A character readily recognizable and 



* Read before the New York Entomological Society, November i8, 1915. 



