STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
487 
decaying trees, beneath the bark. The genus is somewhat ex¬ 
tensive, nearly thirty species occurring in Great Britain alone, 
and they appear to be equally common upon this side of the 
Atlantic. Three of our species have been described by Mr. Say, 
and several others are in my own collection. Our most com¬ 
mon species occurs from the last of June till the middle of Au¬ 
gust, in woods and in the yards about our buildings, and may 
frequently be met with upon the windows in our houses. It may 
be named 
The Common midge, Molobrus vulgaris. It measures 0.10 to 0.12 in length, 
and is black, with blackish brown legs and pale thighs. Its poisers are whitish, 
and its wings hyaline. The sides of its thorax below the wings are tinged with 
pale, and the abdomen with brown, rarely pale. 
Another common species found in the same situations and at 
the same dates with the preceding, and quite similar to it in its 
colors, may be distinguished from it by its much larger size and 
the smokiness of its wings. 
The Smoky-winged midge, Molobrus fuliginosus, measures 0.18 in length, 
and is black with blackish brown shanks and pale thighs, their haunches being 
commonly white. Its wings are semi-transparent and smoky. The sixteen 
cylindrical joints of its antennae arc more widely separated from each other by 
short intervening pedicles than in the preceding species. The gravid female, 
when pinned, extrudes her eggs, connected together in a continuous string. 
A smaller species than either of the preceding, attracted my 
notice from the singular manner in which it ran about upon 
the paper on which I was writing, one night the latter part of 
December. As other individuals were found at the same period 
upon the windows, there is little doubt they had hatched from 
the earth in some flower pots which were in the room. This 
tiny insect would advance very rapidly two or three inches and 
then abruptly pause or move backwards a step or two and in¬ 
stantly run again in another direction about the same distance, 
and then back up again and start off in another course. It is 
quite similar to the Molobrus (Sciara) fimoratus of Mr. Say, which 
like the foregoing, is a common species on windows in the month 
of July, but here the abdomen is of a uniform color, or pale 
only at its tip. It may be named in allusion to its mode of 
running, 
The Pickle midge, Molobrus inconstans. It measures 0.08 in length, and 
is black with the thorax smooth and slightly shining, the thighs pale and 
whitish, aud the wings pellucid and glassy with an iridesoent violet and red 
reflection. 
