42 



BGB-KILI>En. DBSCniPTIOIf OP TBE tNSECt. 



given, that thej' may not be confounded with any other species which may 

 be closely similar to them. 



They measure to the end of the wings 0.85 to one inch, and to the end of 

 the body 0.05 to 1.15, the males being- rather smaller than the females. The 

 head is short and broad, shaped like a plano-convex lens, flat on its hind 

 side and convex in front. Its summit or crown is deeply excavated, leav- 

 ing a vacant space between the upper part of the eyes, in the middle of 

 ^vhich excavation are the oceli or eyelets, appearing like three black glassy 

 dots placed at the corners of a triangle. Tiie ground color of the head is 

 yellow. All the face below the antennee is covered with long hairs form- 

 ing a moustache of a light yellow color, with a tuft of short black bristles 

 at the mouth, and on each side are whiskers of a yellowish gray color. 

 Tiie base of the head has a sort of collar formed of radiating gray hairs, 

 and behind the upper part of each eye is a row of black bristles. The eyes 

 are large and protuberant, occupying two-thirds of the surface of the head, 

 and arc finely reticulated or divided into an immense number of minute 

 facets. The antcnnaj are inserted at the anterior edge of the excavation 

 in the crown of the head. They are small, scarcely reaching to the base 

 of the head if turned backward. They are black and composed of three 

 joints, the first one longest and cylindric; the second shortest andobconic; 

 the third thickest and egg-shaped, its apex ending in a bristle which is 

 about equal to the antenna in length, and is slightly more slender towards 

 its tip, where it becomes a little thickened, Tiie trunk or proboscis is as 

 long as the head, its end projecting out from the bristles of the face. It 

 appears like a long, tapering tube of a hard crustaceous ti'xture, black and 

 shining, blunt at the end, with a fringe of hairs around the orifice. In 

 one specimen the tongue protrudes from the orifice in the end of the trunk, 

 sharp pointed and like the blade of a lancet in shape, hard, shining and 

 black. The thorax or fore body is the broadest part of the insect, and is of 

 a short oval form, with bluntly rounded ends. It is of a tarnished yellow- 

 ish brown or butternut color, with two faint gray stripes along the middle 

 of the back, alternating with three darker brown ones. It is boarded with 

 black hairs and posteriorly with long yellowish graj' ones, which are inter- 

 spersed with black bristles. The abdomen or hind body is long, slender 

 and tapering from its base in the male, and is more broad and somewhat 

 flattened in the female. It is black above and covered with prostrate hairs, 

 which are dull yellow in the male and gray in the female. On the sides 

 and beneath the ground color is dull yellow in the male and gray in the 

 female, and clothed with gray hairs in both sexes. The two last segments, 

 the eighth and ninth, are conspicuously protruded, making two or three 

 more segments than arc usually visible externally in insects. In the female 

 these segments taper to an acute point, and are black and shining. In the 

 male they appear like a cylindrical tube with a projecting valve under- 

 neath at the base, and are coated over with dull yellow hairs, and on the 

 upper side with silvery white ones, pressed to the surface and forming a 

 conspicuous oblong spot of this color, which is two-lobed or notched at its 

 ends. And in the dead specimens before me three bristle like processes 



