152 MR. E. SHELFORD ON A NEW GENUS OF DIPTERA. 



reo-ards a specimen o£ another species, ^. ScJiwarzii, taken recently in 

 Arizona, as a male. Until sufficient material for dissection is obtained it is 

 not possible to settle the question of the sexes of these aberrant Diptera with 

 any degree of certainty. It has been suggested that Platyphora Lubhocki, 

 Yerrall, is the male of ^nigmatias blattoides, but this is open to very 

 considerable doubt. 



Attention may be drawn here to some other remarkable Diptera which 

 Brues [9], a leading authority on the Phoridee, considers ought to be retained 

 in that family ; he promises in the near future a paper treating of the 

 relations of these aberrant forms to more normal types. 



In 1897 Dahl [2] described from the Bismarck Archipelago a wingless fly, 

 found on carrion and also on an Aroid, with an offensive odour, of the genus 

 Amoiyliophallus. This insect, on account of a very superficial resemblance to a 

 flea^ was regarded as intermediate between the fleas and true flies, was named 

 Pulicipliora lucifera, and was made the type of a new family Puliciphoridse. 

 Wandolleck [3] subsequently re-examined Dahl's specimen, and described in 

 some detail its anatomy together with that of another species from the 

 Bismarck Archipelago — ChonocepJialus dorsalis — and of a third from Liberia, 

 a form parasitic on land-molluscs of the genus AcJiatina. The last species, 

 thou oh described, was not named by Wandolleck, but has since been named 

 Wandollechia Coohi. Wandolleck, in his memoir on these three species, heaps 

 scorn on Dahl's view of their affinities, re-christens PidicipJiora lac'ifera as 

 Stetliopatlms ocellatus and the Puliciphoridse as Stethopathidse. Though 

 there cannot be the slightest doubt that these Diptera have no real affinity 

 with Pidex, the rules of priority in nomenclature forbid the supplanting of a 

 valid name, however great the absurdity that is so commemorated ; Stetlio- 

 patlms ocellatus, W^and., must consequently sink as a synonym of Pidiciplwra 

 lucifera, Dahl. Breddin and Borner [6] described in 1904, under the name 

 of Thaumatoxena Wasmanni, a remarkable insect found in a termite's nest in 

 Natal ; this they consider to be not only the type of a new family Thaumat- 

 oxenidge, but also the type of a new sub-order of Ehynchota, the Conor- 

 rhyncha. Borner later [7] discussed the relation of this insect to the other 

 orders of Hexapoda. Silvestri [8] in 1905 published an account of another 

 species of the same genus, Tli. Andreinii, and came to the conclusion that 

 the genus is referable to the family Puliciphoridse (= Stethopathidse of 

 Wandolleck). The insect is very remarkable in appearance, the abdomen 

 being covered above and below with a single large scutum, three minute tele- 

 scopo-like segments alone projecting from the ventral surface towards its 

 apex; but the antennae are typically Phorid in character, and the mouth-parts, 

 judoing from figures, are sufficiently like those olPidicijyliora, Clionoceplialus, 

 and Wandollechia to warrant a belief that Tliaumatoxena is merely an extreme 

 modification of the Phorid type, brought about perhaps by its termitophilous 



