M. Bezzi 
37 
and Or. mexicanus from French Guiana. Blanchard had already recorded 
it in 1895 under the name of Spilogaster anomalus as a subcutaneous parasite 
of man. 
In 1901 A. de Miranda Ribeiro accepted the above synonymy on the 
authority of Prof. Mik of Vienna, to whom he had sent specimens for identi¬ 
fication. These specimens were caught on the bird Peristera rufaxilla. 
Meinert in 1889 had already described, from an unidentified Brazilian 
bird nestling, a muscid larva as Philornis molesta which evidently belongs to 
the same group. Other allied forms were described in 1895 by Tyler Townsend 
from the West Indies under the name of Mydaea spermophilae, found on birds 
of the genera Spermophila and Mimus. 
In two papers of 1911 and 1913 the late Dr J. C. Nielsen has studied very 
thoroughly two species of bird parasites under the names of Mydaea anomala 
and Mydaea torquans ; the material examined was obtained from Argentina, 
and the larvae were found as subcutaneous parasites in tumours on various 
birds, both old and young ones; torquans occurring on birds of the genera 
Spermophila , Mimus, Homorus and Pitangus , and anomala on Xiphocolaptes 
albicollis. 
The Rev. J. Aiken (1913) has described Mydaea pici from British Guiana 
and has recognised four different species belonging to the present group. On 
the contrary Lutz and Neiva in 1912, mentioning that subcutaneous larvae 
are frequent on young birds in Brazil, think that they all belong to a single 
species, Mydaea pici Macquart. Engel in 1920 expressed a similar opinion. 
In 1916 Neiva and Penna recorded Mydaea pici from numerous birds 
in Central Brazil, saying that the larvae are so frequent as to be commonly 
named i( berro : ; they were found on birds of the genera Cassicus, Furnarius, 
Molothrus, Paroaria, Amazona, Pionus, etc., mostly belonging to the Passeres. 
The late Prof. Stein in 1918 revised Mik’s types of 1901 under the name 
of Mydaea anomala ; and in the World Catalogue of 1919 stated that anomala 
and torquans form a single species. 
In my opinion there are in the Neotropical Region several species of 
Anthomyidae, the larvae of which live in subcutaneous tumours of birds. 
This opinion is supported by the fact that in a collection of Brazilian flies 
belonging to this group sent to me some years ago by Dr Lutz, Prof. Stein 
has recognised the following species of Mydaea: brevipectinata Stein, lati- 
palpis Stein, sparsiplumata Stein and tinctinervis Stein, all described in 1918. 
It is probable that some of these species were bred from subcutaneous larvae. 
As a conclusion, we can provisionally place the South American An¬ 
thomyidae with the larvae forming the subcutaneous tumours in birds together 
under the generic name of Philornis. 
