No. 413.] ABERRANT PHORIDA FROM TEXAS. 341 
Still more remarkable is /Enigmatias, represented by Æ. 
blattoides Meinert from Denmark, which does not seem to be 
closely related to the Stethopathinz, although I have unfortu- 
nately not had access to the original description of Meinert 
(90). Its habitus is certainly entirely different from that of 
any of the genera here mentioned. Platyphora lubbockii Verrall 
has been suggested as the possible male of /Enigmatias, but 
that is very problematical. 
Throughout the winter we had been searching in vain for 
the males of Ecitomyia, which is very common in the nests of 
Eciton cecum, but not until spring (February 3) were we able 
to obtain them. On that day we obtained two specimens from 
different nests in which the females were abundant. A glimpse 
at one of them immediately justified any surmises made as 
to their phorid character, for the males, although much like 
the females, possessed fully developed wings with the peculiar 
phorid venation and large halteres! 
Such a remarkable amount of variation in usually stable 
morphological characters may be best explained by the great 
tendency of all degenerate structures to vary in an unusually 
high degree, and by a great power of adaptation in the 
Phoridze. 
The habits of only four of the genera are known with cer- 
tainty. They are all myrmecophiles or termitophiles. A fifth, 
Wandolleckia, lives apparently ectoparasitically upon large west 
African land snails (Achatina variegata Roissy). 
Their geographical distribution is extremely peculiar and is 
a case of remarkable discontinuous distribution not due to the 
great age of a certain type, for it does not seem possible to 
regard them as an old group, but rather as several independent 
and to some extent conveying lines of degeneration. This view 
is strengthened by the above-mentioned impossibility of show- 
ing any interrelation of the genera. 
The following dichotomy will serve for the identification of 
the genera thus far known. 
