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ON THE BRITISH SPECIES OF SIMULIUM.— II. THE EARLY STAGES ; 

 WITH CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS TO PART I. 

 By F. W. Edwards. 

 {Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 



In the introduction to the first part of this paper* it was remarked that very little 

 exact work had been published on the adult European Simuliidae. This is 

 equally true of the larvae and pupae ; in fact no one has attempted to describe the 

 earlv stages of more than two or three of the common species. Moreover, in spite 

 of their great interest, and the ease with which they can be collected and reared, 

 they have apparently been almost entirely ignored by collectors, so that whereas in 

 publishing my previous work I was able to acknowledge valuable assistance from a 

 number of fellow entomologists, the results given in the following pages are, unless 

 otherwise stated, due to my own observations. I wish especially to thank Mr. M. E. 

 Mosely for the early stages of S. subornatum, the last species to come under my notice 

 in the pupal stage. While there are still many important gaps in our knowledge 

 which remain to be filled, it has been thought worth while to state without further 

 delay the results that have been obtained so far. 



The purpose of the present paper is to give the writer's observations on the biology 

 of the insects, and to characterise, sufficiently for purposes of identification, the 

 known larvae and pupae. In the course of rearing some species from the pupae, 

 it was discovered that the females of the latipes group had been associated previously 

 with the wrong males, and their characters had been badly confused, both in my 

 original paper and in the reprint of it which appeared in the Entomologists' Monthly 

 Magazine. Owing to this somewhat serious error, which has led the writer to adopt 

 a dilTerent interpretation of Fries' S. aureum, and owing also to the discovery of 

 four apparently new species, it has been thought advisable to tabulate afresh the 

 adults of both sexes. I am indebted to Mons. E. Segny,of the Paris Museum,for 

 examining at my request Meigen's types of Simulium ; he reports that in ornatuMt 

 reptans, argyreatum, sericatum and latipes of Meigen, the types agree with the 

 interpretation here given. 



From the systematists' point of view the most valuable memoirs which have 

 appeared dealing with the early stages of Simulium are those of Lutzf, MaUochJ 

 and Pomeroy § on the American species. To all these writers the present author is 

 glad to express his indebtedness. As regards the early stages of the Simuliidae 

 outside Britain and North and South America, they are still scarcely known, though 

 Mr. Pomeroy has lately undertaken the study of the African species. 1) 



* Bull. Ent. Res., vi, pp. 23-42 (1915). 



t LuTZ, A., Mem. Inst. Oswaldo Cruz, i, p. 124 (1909), and ii, p. 213 (1910). 



X Malloch, J. R. " American Black Flies or Buffalo Gnats." — U.S. Dept. Agric. 

 Bur. of Ent. Tech. Series 26, 1914. 



§ Pomeroy, A. W. J. " Notes on five North American Buffalo Gnats of the genus 

 Simulium:' — U.S. Dept. Agric. Bull. 329, 1916. 



II While this work has been passing through the press a valuable paper on the German 

 species has been published by Dr. K. Friedrichs (Vorlauf. Mitt. Sitzb. Abh. Naturf. 

 Ges. Rostock, vii, pp. 211-226, Oct. 1920). The adults, pupae and habitats of nine 

 species are briefly described). 



