610 
DIPTERA. 
rather like some of the small Acalyptrate Muscoids, but the shape of 
the wings and a comparison of the venation (fig. 403) will separate them. 
Fig. 403— Lonchopterid wing. 
[After Comstock.) 
They are of no economic importance, and have not yet been found in 
India. 
CYCLORHAPHA ASCHIZA. 
Syrphid^e. 
Small to rather large flies, often brightly coloured, sometimes furry, 
never bristly, usually polished. Male eyes often touching, always 
closer together than in the females. A “ false vein ” nearly 
always present between Radius and Media . 
From an aesthetic point of view this entirely beneficial family is 
perhaps the most attractive of all from the beauty and diversity of form 
and colour represented among its members. Something like three 
thousand species are known from all over the world, but Van derWulp 
records only sixty-seven from India, a number which very inadequately 
represents the truth, as the flies are abundant in the hills, though in the 
plains the species are often rather noticeably few. This is probably 
owing to the comparative scarcity of flowering plants, since theSyrphids 
are essentially flower-flies ; in gardens one may see them at any time when 
the sun is shining, with their smooth polished bodies, surrounded by an 
aura of quivering wing, poised motionless above a flower. If disturbed, 
they vanish in an instant only to reappear hovering in some other spot, 
and this mastery of flight is very characteristic of the family as a whole, 
earning them their English name of “ Hover-flies.” 
Though the mode of life of the adults of different species is very uni¬ 
form (they all feed on the pollen or nectar of flowers), the habits of the 
larvae are equally diverse. A few live in stems or bulbs, and a great 
many in rotting vegetable or animal matter ; the larvae of the genus 
Rristalis and others live in water or submerged in wet filth, and have 
