Reports to various Correspondents. 15 
sucking up the nectar from flowers. It is common to Europe 
and North America. Besides entering houses it also invades 
stables, cow-sheds, pig-styes, and fowl-houses, feeding off the blood 
of fowls as well as mammals. It prefers to attack horses on the 
legs. The bite is followed by the formation of a large papule, 
upon which the hairs stand erect. They may be found from late 
spring to late autumn, and especially worry horses near woods. In 
houses they are frequently taken tor house flies, but a casual 
examination of the head reveals a distinct piercing proboscis project- 
ing from below the head. When resting the Stomoxys carries its 
proboscis forwards, the Muscct downwards. 
The fly reaches between 10 and 12 mm. across the expanded 
wings, and is about 8 mm. long ; it is deep brown with grey reflections, 
the face white between the large brown eyes ; palpi and antenme 
brown ; thorax with two median dark stripes, two linear dark spots in 
front and two longer ones behind in a line with them, the paler areas 
of the thorax with cinereous reflections ; the abdomen has a basal dark 
band to each segment, which spreads out in the middle, nearly across 
the segments, and so forms a broken dark dorsal line ; each segment 
except the last has two deep brown apical spots ; legs deep brown, 
almost black, except the base of the tibiae, which are bright testaceous. 
The male is darker than the female, and the spots on the abdomen 
larger, and the dorsal stripe less interrupted. The projecting pro- 
boscis is deep brown. 
The eggs are laid in horse-dung and manure of all kinds, the 
former by choice, where the white maggots change when mature into 
rather pyriform brown puparia. They appear to pass the winter in 
the latter stage. They may soon be cleared out of a room by opening 
the windows at the top as soon as the weather brightens. 
Haematopota causing annoyance in Kent. 
Mr. Jeffreys, of Ashford, Kent, wrote asking for information con- 
cerning the fly he sent, which, he stated, bites severely. This biting 
fly proved to be one of the Tcibanidse, and belongs to the genus 
Hmmatopota, the species being crassicornis, Whlbg. The most common 
one found about Kent is H. pluvialis, L. The two species are very 
similar. A third species occurs in Great Britain, IT. italica, Meig. 
I have not seen it in Kent. Walker gives it as a synonym of 
pluvialis , but it is not so. These Hsematopota are locally known as 
“ Brimps ” in Kent, and as Bain Breeze Elies and Horse Breeze Elies 
in other parts. They are particularly abundant along roads and paths 
