Illustrations of British blood-sucking flies / with notes by Ernest Edward Austen.

  • British Museum (Natural History). Department of Entomology.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Illustrations of British blood-sucking flies / with notes by Ernest Edward Austen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    coloured lower margin ; or bluish-violet, underneath with three green bands bordered with red ; the eyes of the female are green, with from three to four purple bands. The abdomen of the female is rather broad. Of this species there are no modern British specimens in the M useum collection. Colonel Yerbury writes that it is very rare, and that he has met with it only at Fordingbridge, Hants, and Barmouth, North Wales. According to Brauer (Joe. cit., p. 138), Mr. Verrall has taken it at Lyndhurst, New Forest, Hants, in June. The Continental series of T/i. micans in the possession of the Museum includes specimens from Rhenish Prussia and Bohemia. Therioplectes borealis, (Mg.pro parte) Brauer. The only British specimen of this mountain species in the Museum collection is a male from Glen Avon, S. Banffshire, N.B., June 8th, 1893 {IV. R. Ogilvie Grant), of which the dimensions are—length, 15 mm.; width of head, 5 mm.; wing expanse, 2*]\ mm. The general coloration of the insect is brown, with a chestnut-coloured patch on each side of the second and third abdominal segments ; the hind margin of the first segment is also of the same colour on each side, and there is just a trace of a similar patch on each side of the fourth segment. The eyes of this male are densely clothed with light yellowish-brown hair, and the facets on the upper two-thirds of each eye, except the hind margin, are conspicuously larger than those below, the change from the large to the small facets being somewhat abrupt. According to Brauer Joe. cit., pp. 143, 144), in the living insect the eyes of the male are green, with one or two purple bands, while those of the female are described as green, with three broad purple bands, sometimes very dark. Brauer states that the front {i.e., the space between the eyes) in the female is very broad and short, at the most from two and a-half to three times higher than broad. Of Continental specimens of this species the Museum possesses a male from Alten, Finmark, July, 1903 {Sir G. F. Hampsou, Bt.);