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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    that the female specimen illustrated in Plate 15, which was taken by Colonel Yerbury at Aviemore, Inverness-shire, on June 5th, 1904, has a small appendix to the upper branch of the third vein in each wing, and traces of a similar appendix are to be seen in some of the other specimens in the Museum. In the British Islands TJierioplectes luridus would appear to be a northern species, and as yet the Museum possesses no specimens from either England, Wales, or Ireland. Colonel Yerbury writes :— In Scotland this is the earliest of the Tabanidse. In May 1905, it was met with in numbers near Nairn, when both sexes were found sitting on a sandy road leading to Mairston Sand Hills. A single female was taken at Aviemore on June 5th, 1904. Probably all the Tabanidae seen by me in Scotland at this time of the year belonged to this species. The Continental specimens of this species in the Museum collection are all from Norway; additional localities given by Brauer are Swedish-Lapland, Sweden, Poland, Silesia, and Bohemia. Therioplectes tropicus, Pz. (nec Mg.). (Form bisignatus, Jacnn.) Plate 16. In its typical form this species has an ochraceous or ochraceous- buff patch on each side of the abdomen extending from the posterior angles of the first to the posterior margin of the third or anterior border of the fourth segment, leaving a broad median black stripe one-third of the abdomen in width. Two males in the possession of the Museum from Oxshott, Surrey, June 9th, 1895 {Lieut-Colonel Yerbury and IV. R. Ogilvie Grant), and Chattenden Roughs, Kent, July 12th, 1902 {H. W. Andrews), respectively are of this character, but the whole of the British females in the Museum series [15] are of the melanochroic form bisignatus, of which a specimen is illustrated in Plate 16, which accordingly would appear to be the common British form of the female of this species. As a further proof of this conclusion it may be mentioned that at Oxshott on June 9th, 1895,
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