314 FoRTT-sixTH Beport on the State Museum 



vent above, in the female distant, with an interposed, oblong, black 

 spot, furcate above and below, antennae blackish, with the articulations 

 piceous or ferruginous. Thorax black, covered with a close, dirty yel- 

 low or fulvous, coarse pubescence, with remote, curved, black bristles. 

 Wings at the articulations and extreme base, ferruginous. Winglets 

 and poisers white. Legs rusty black, with black hairs. Abdomen with 

 distant, curved, black bristles, in both eexes cinereous, with a. silky 

 lustre, each segment with two quadrate black spots, and widely edged 

 with black, varying in situation and degree, according to the incidence 

 of the light. 



This species, not uncommon in houses in summer, nearly disappears 

 when the more abundant J/, harpy ia [do77i€stiea\ appears. 



Remedies. 



Whenever this fly intrudes in such number as to render its destruc- 

 tion desirable, this can readily be accomplished by the use of pyrethrum. 

 If the}^ are gathered in clusters, the insecticide may be conveniently 

 thrown upon them with a powder bellows. Should they be scattered 

 throughout the room, the powder may be distributed through the 

 atmosphere of the apartment, first closing the windows and doors, and 

 driving up the flies that they may be brought more directly under its 

 influence. 



That the pyrethrum is effective against these flies, notwithstanding a 

 statement that has been made to the contrary, is shown from the note 

 received from my Palenville correspondent, to whom its use in her 

 emergency had been recommendtd: 



" I send my kindest thanks for the advice which has cleared m}'- house 

 of its army of flies. I used the pyrethrum with bellows, and send j^ou 

 a trophy of its success. We swept up dustpanf uls of them, and are 

 now entirely free from their annoying presence." 



Killed by a Fung-us. 

 Mr. C. L. Marlatt, of the Entomological Division, U. S. Dept. Agri- 

 culture, at Washington, in recording, in Insect Life (loc. clt.) an extra- 

 ordinary mortality among flies observed by him on the grounds of the 

 Agricultural Department, in the autumn of 1891, states, that among 

 the large immber of dead flies that were thickly covering the under- 

 side of the leaves and were fastened by a fungus growth — often as 

 many as eight or ten flies on a single leaf — most of them were 1*01- 

 lenia rudis. The fungus was not, as was at first supposed, the com- 

 mon fungus of the house-fly, viz., JErnpusa musr.ce, which is not 

 uncommon in houses on windows, etc., during the late summer and 

 early autumn, but was determined as a species recently described by 

 Dr. R. Ihaxter, as JEJmjnisa Americana, which, so far as known, 

 occurs o\\\y out-doors, on vegetation, etc. 



