EPHYDRIM. 
625 
Drosophilids breed in dung and other filth, and are fond of sitting on 
or near it, render them liable to carry disease germs and so infect food. 
The interesting discovery has recently been made that a Drosophila 
harbours trypanosome-like parasites (Chatton and Allilaire, Comptes 
Rendus del’Acad. Sci. Fr. 1908). Several other insects are known to 
harbour microscopic protozoal parasites more or less similar to those 
which cause various diseases of warm-blooded animals, a fact which 
should be taken into account in any researches on the transmission of 
disease through the agency of insects. 
Ephydrim. 
Small greyish or brownish flies. The round mouth-opening and the 
head often large. Antennce short , arista bare, or pectinate on the 
upper side. Anal cell rudimentary, discal and 2nd basal united. 
The family, while economically of some slight importance owing to 
the fact that the adult flies are predaceous and abundant, is interesting 
because of the often curious shape and mode of life of the larvae. These 
are found in decaying vegetable stuff, in dirty and stagnant water, in 
salt or brackish pools (sometimes in countless numbers), and even in 
waters so charged with alkaline salts as to be apparently uninhabitable 
for other living animals, the larvae and pupae occurring in such 
extraordinary abundance in this unpromising situation that they were 
largely used by the natives of the country for food (Williston). 
As in several other predaceous insects, some of these flies (the genus 
Octhera, which occurs throughout Northern India) have the front femora 
very large and flat, the lower edge being armed with rough spines which 
hold fast the prey, while the fly sucks its juices. PI. LXVII, fig. 4, 
shows a species of Brachydeutera which is apparently common all over 
Northern India, the eggs, larvae, and pupae being found in tanks and 
puddles, on whose surface the adult flies walk about seeking the small 
insects on which they feed. The larvae are vegetable-feeders, and the 
family is thus a distinctly beneficial one, the larvae being scavengers, 
the adults insect-killers ; I have seen even small Tabanid larvae attacked 
and destroyed by these flies. The curious form of the pupa shows in 
an exaggerated degree a type similar to that exhibited by certain 
Drosophilid pupae, and the Ephydridce are closely related to this family. 
Although only three Indian species ( Notiphila fasciata, Wied., N. albi- 
ventris and N. indica, Wied.) are included in Van der Wuip’s catalogue, 
iil 40 
