1M8.1 67 



F.Z.S., A.L.S. ; Other Members of Council, A. W. Bacot, E. C. Bedwell, K. G. 

 Blair, Dr. T. A. Chapman, F.Z.S., W. C. Crawley, B. A., H. Willoughby Ellis, 

 F.Z.S., Dr. H. Eltringham, M.A., E.Z.S., J. C. F. Fryer, M.A., A. Hugh 

 Jones, Rev. F. D. Morice, M.A., S. A. Neave, M.A., B.Sc, F.Z.S., Herbert 

 E. Page. 



Messrs. Frederick Walter Cocks, 26 Crown Street, Reading, and William 

 Gerald Harding, St. Hugh's School, Bickley, Kent, were elected Fellows of the 

 Society. 



Capt. Purefoy exhibited a series of British Chrysophanus dispar, var. rutilus, 

 whose ancestors had come from the neighbourhood of Berlin before the War ; 

 they were now firmly established in a mar^h in South Ireland, into which the 

 food-plant, Rumex kydrolapathum, had also been introduced. Mr. H. Main 

 exhibited with the epidiascope a series of photographs illustrating the pupation 

 of Dytiscus maryinalis. — Geo. Wheeler, Hon. Secretary. 



SYNOPSIS OF BRITISH STREPSIPTERA OF THE GENERA 8TYL0PS 



AND HALICTOXENUS. 



BY R. C. L. PEEKIN^S, M.A., D.Sc, F.B.S. 



(Plate I.) 



Sttlops Kirby. 



Since 1872, when S. S. Saunders published his " Monographia Stylo- 

 pidarum" (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lend. pp. 1-48), very little attention has 

 been paid to the specific characters of the species of Sty lops found in 

 this country. In 1909, Pierce, in his " Monographic Eevision of the 

 Strepsiptera," published by the Smithsonian Institution, dealt with five 

 species, the types of which had been described originally in England, or 

 at least collected here. Four of these he went so far as to include in a 

 tabular key to the males of the genus — seven species in all being dis- 

 tinguished therein — ti'usting to the old figures and descriptions for the 

 distinguishing characters ! Most of these characters that he gives I 

 believe to be erroneous. It can safely be said that the study of specific 

 characters of Stylopidae is one of great difficulty and, in the genus 

 Stylops at least, the main characters in the 6 6 are to be found in the 

 antennae and to some extent in the aedeagus. Dried specimens are 

 subject to shrinking and distortion of most parts, and for really accuiute 

 determination of the antennal characters it will probably prove necessary 

 to detach each joint and mount it separately in balsam in order that the 

 true proportions may be rightly appreciated. The aedeagus, bent as it is 

 in more than one direction, presents very different appearances in different 

 aspects, as do the antennal joints and those mouth-parts which are 



