680 
NEW AND LITTLE KNOWN INDIAN BOMBYLIID*-E 
BY 
Lieut. -Colonel C. G. Nurse. 
{ With a plate.) 
The publication of Brunetti’s Vol. I, Diptera Brachycera of the Fauna of 
British India series has stimulated me to attempt the determination of some of 
the Diptera I had collected while in India. My entomological energies during 
the last part of my Indian service were devoted chiefly to Hj-inenoptera, but I 
earefuUy preserved any conspicuous Diptera that I cams across, and thus 
amassed a fair amount of material. Having recently come to reside in Lon- 
don in close proximity to the Natural History Museum, I have had oppor- 
tunities of comparing my specimens with those in the national collection, and 
of access to the unrivalled library of the Museum. In working through the 
Bombyliidce I found that I had taken representatives of several genera which had 
not previously been recorded from India, and a considerable number of species 
which are either undescribed, or have only been recorded from outside Indian 
limits. I therefore decided to publish the result of my studies. 
I have to acknowledge the kind help of Major E. E. Austen, D.S.O., who has 
not only given me the benefit of his opinion from time to time, but has also placed 
at my disposal his private copies of several pamphlets dealing with the Bomby- 
liidce. 
The present paper covers only the genera Litorrhynchus and Exoprosopa, but 
I hope later on to work through the other genera of Bombyliidce as represented 
in India. 
Litorrhynchus, Macq. 
This genus, of which the original spelling was Litorynchus, was erected in 
1840 by Macquart to include certain species of Exoprosopa which have a more or 
less rounded face, long proboscis, and peculiar wing pattern. Most subsequent 
authors, including Brunetti in Vol. I, Diptera Brachycera, have sunk it as a 
synonym of Exoprosopa. I follow Professor Bezzi (Tr. Ent. Soc., 1911, p. 629) in 
keeping the two genera distinct, although one or two of what he regards as the 
essential characters of the genus do not quite apply to the only two species known 
from India. In these the proboscis, though considerably longer than the head, 
is not twice as lonu, and the style is somewhat shorter than the 3rd antennal joint. 
The two Indian species may be distinguished as follows : — 
.Sides of 1st abdominal segment with white hairs . . . . lar. Fab. 
.Sides of 1st abdominal segment with black haii'S . . . . collaris, Wied. 
Brunetti sinks collaris as a synonj-m of lar, but I hold very strongly that 
they are quite distinct. The wing band in collaris is darker than in lar, and its 
outer border less rugged. The ground colour of the abdomen in collaris is black 
and in lar rufous or rufescent. In lar there are white hairs near the apex of 
abdomen, but these are absent in collaris. These difierences are not sexual, as 
I have both sexes of collaris. 
Both species appear to be widely spread in India ; Brunetti records them from 
various localities, and I found both at Deesa and Jubbulpore. The pubescence 
on the abdomen of most of my specimens of collaris is not at all rubbed, and the 
hair at the sides of the 1st abdominal segment is pure black, though there are a 
few white hairs on the thorax below the po.stalai calli. 
The figure of the wing (fig. 3, plate III) given in Vol. I, Diptera Brachycera, 
agrees better with collaris than with lar. 
The two specimens now in the British Museum mentioned by Brunetti on p. 196 
as having been obtained by Col. Yerbury in Ceylon, belong to two different 
species, and should probably be assigned to Exoprosopa rather than to the 
