The tsetse-fly investigation now in progress in the Northern Provinces of Nigeria is an outcome of the proposal of the Imperial Bureau of Entomology that tsetse-fly research in Africa should be put on a more organised basis. For various reasons it is not yet practicable to inaugurate this work with funds contributed by the various Colonies interested in the problem, but the suggestion so met with the whole-hearted approval of His Excellency Sir Hugh Clifford, G.C.M.G., Governor of Nigeria, and of Dr. T. E. Rice, Director of Medical Services, that it was decided to commence such an investigation at once. The helpful interest of these gentlemen has greatly aided the commencement of the work. At present the only investigators engaged are the authors of this report, the first of whom began work in July 1921 and was joined by the other in September of that year.

A long series of breeding experiments were conducted by the writer at the Malaria Bureau, F.M.S., between April 1920 and April 1921 with a view to obtaining in bred families a sufficiency of Anophelines for the purpose of study which might perhaps set at rest, once and for all, various long-vexed questions as to the validity of certain species; and for the purpose of obtaining further data than were previously available as to the bionomics of the insects.

Knowledge of the breeding habits of the Anopheline mosquitos has advanced greatly since the days when it was considered that the larvae of any species were distributed indiscriminately in all and sundry collections of stagnant water. In the Federated Malay States entomological research, which has now extended over many years, tends to show that preferences by the various species for different kinds of breeding-places exist; and attempts have been made to define in relation to particular species, or groups of species, or groups of species, the types of breeding-place favoured.

Attention was first directed to the Scoliid wasps of Madagascar in 1916, in which year it became clear that further attempts at importing Tiphia parallela from Barbados to Mauritius for the control of Phytalus smithi would have to be abandoned on account of difficulties of transport arising out of the war. The establishment of Tiphia in Mauritius shortly afterwards caused this question to lose its urgency, but in the meantime the attention of the writer had been attracted by a footnote in a paper by de Saussure* regarding Oryctes simiar and its natural enemy Scolia oryctophaga, the habits of which had been studied by Dr. Ch. Coquerel during his stay in Madagascar in the year 1850.

[The systematic keys to the species of Aphids that attack Graminaceae, recently published by Mr. A. K. Mordvilko (Bull. Petrograd Div. Sta. Protect. Plants from Pests, iii, no. 3, 1921, 72 pp., 19figs.) are likely to be of considerable value to students of these injurious insects, and it seemed desirable that they should be translated from Russian into English. The original keys are very lengthy, and therefore Mr. B. P. Uvarov has kindly condensed them, and they have then been translated, under his supervision, by Miss F. B. Constable, of the Imperial Bureau of Entomology. Mr. F. Laing, of the British Museum, has also kindly assisted with advice in regard to certain technical points.—Ed.]

Severe injury to the roots of cucumber plants has occurred since January of this year (1922) through the attacks of the larvae of certain minute “fungus-gnats” belonging to the family Sciaridae. Although such attacks have not been recorded previously by growers of cucumbers, it is more than probable that the flies have been present in glass-houses for a number of years, and that damage arising through their agency has mistakenly been attributed to “eel-worms.”

♀. Head clothed almost entirely with broad flat scales, though there are a very few narrow curved ones and a few upright forked ones on the nape. Scales at the back of the head mostly light ochreous; a rather broad creamy mid-dorsal stripe, and a conspicuous silvery margin to the eyes; remaining scales on upper part of head forming two large but irregular patches of black; another small black patch low down among the creamy scales on each side. Clypeus bare, dark brown. Eyes well separated. Orbital bristles dark brown. Proboscis blackish, slender, slightly longer than the front femora. Palpi fully one-fourth as long as the proboscis, blackish, with the usual conspicuous silvery apical patch. Tori blackish, with a large patch of silvery-white scales. Thorax with the integument uniformly black. Mesonotum clothed mainly with rather large and coarse, dull brown, narrow, curved scales, those surrounding the ante-scutellar space golden-brown, but scarcely any broader than the others, and not forming definite lines; no mid-dorsal golden line; a small patch of board flat silvery scales in the middle of the front margin, and a small patch of narrower scales in front of the root of each wing; a pair of large crescent-shaped patches of broadly crescent-patches of broadly crescent-shaped silvery-white scales in the anterior half. Scutellum with the median and lateral bodies lobes completely clothed with silvery scales. Prothoracic lobes, pro-epimera bristles, and a large part of the pleurae clothed with silvery-white scales. About five pro-epimeral bristles, and about five post-spiracular; no lower mesepimeral. Abdomen clothed mostly with purplish-black scales; the first tergite, and a basal band on each of tergite, 2–7, creamy white; all tergites with large silvery basal lateral spots, and sternites with silvery basal bands. Eighth segment rather prominent; cerci very short. Legs rather slender. Front femora almost entirely black; mid fermora black except for a small white spot on the anterior side just beyond the middle, and a rather conspicuous silvery-white tip; hind femora all white on the basal fourth, the outer side silvery-white to a little beyond the middle and also rather broadly at the tip. Front and middle tibiae with a small white spot at the base beneath, hind tibiae entirely black. Front and middle tarsi black, with narrow white rings at the bases of the first two segments; hind tarsi with rather narrow white rings at the bases of the first three segments, fourth segment white except for the extreme tip, fifth all black. Front and middle claws toothed; hind simple. Wings normal, the scales ligulate and rather dense. Wing-length 4 mm.

During the two years that have elapsed since the publication by the writer of a previous paper on Palestine Tabanidae, a small amount of material belonging to this family has been received from the same country. With one exception, for the Diptera in question—which, though few in number, present several points of interest, besides including representatives of two new species—the National Collection is indebted to the kindness of either Mr. P. A. Buxton or Mr. I. Aharoni.

♂. Head: Eyes closely contiguous, leaving a small, well-raised, brownishgrey dusted ocellar tubercle at vertex with rather large, shining brown ocelli and a few short pale hairs. Large facets of eyes pale brownish-yellow, the small facets nearly black. Frontal triangle extremely small, yellowish-grey dusted. Antennae with first joint moderately long and thick, broadly cylindrical, tapering at base; second joint shorter and narrower than first; subcylindrical, both with short black, stiff hairs; third joint of normal shape, bare, a little longer than first and second together, with five annulations, the last four being black, basal annulation and first and second joints wholly orange. Whole underside of head shining honey-yellow, a medium-sized yellow-dusted space on each side of face contiguous to eye margin. Proboscis and palpi a little deeper coloured, former with labella black. Occiput ash-grey dusted, lower part yellowish with a little pale soft hair.

While engaged in working out some small lots of Psyllid parasites from various parts of the world, I have found it necessary to examine, as far as possible, the records of Chalcids which up to the present have been bred from these hosts. The literature has proved to be more extensive than had been anticipated, and it has therefore seemed well to bring together and list these scattered references when describing the forms that have been considered as new.

The main purpose of this note is to give a name to the Malayan Culicoides that sucks blood from the abdomen of Anopheline mosquitos, and thus to afford cover for the publication of some very interesting observations made recently upon this species by Dr. W. A. Lamborn. At the same time, some account is given of the very few additional specimens of Oriental Culicoides in the British Museum—most of which were also collected by Dr. Lamborn in Malaya; and the opportunity is further taken to describe two other apparently new species of the genus, from Somaliland and Jamaica, respectively, which have recently been received at the Museum.

Elongate, subcylindrical, black, clothed with yellowish-brown and whitish scales with antennae and legs fulvous, the legs with whitish scales.

Last July (1922) a species of beetle, kindly identified by Dr. G. A. K. Marshall as the Tiger beetle, Cicindela octoguttata, F., a common Tropical African species, was observed to prey on mosquito larvae at Accra, in the Gold Coast. As this habit of the beetle does not appear to have been previously observed, and as it is perhaps remarkable that it should prey on such entirely aquatic insects as mosquito larvae, the following brief note may prove of interest.

Each season since 1918 numbers of leaf-feeding sawfly larvae have been taken during the months of June and July in both oat and wheat crops. The larvae feed along the edges of the blades during the day and usually cut off the upper portion.

The weevil, Syagrius fulvitarsis, Pasc., has been known for some time as an enemy of ferns, Mr. W. W. Froggatt having found it abundantly attacking ferns both in greenhouses and in the open in the Botanic Gardens at Sydney.

The species for which this genus is proposed is closely allied to Polydrusus, Germ., and agrees with it in all its more salient characteristics; but it differs from all the species of that genus known to me in the following points:—The head bears a long, deep median furrow; the epistome forms a large bare smooth triangular area, which is well defined and in no way impressed, but even slightly convex; the elytra have a prominent posterior callus, and the ninth and tenth striae coalesce in the middle for one-third of their length.

The collection here described was sent for determination by Dr. K. Kertész to Mr. F. V. Theobald in 1911, and was passed on to the writer by Mr. Theobald in 1911. Most of the specimens were collected by Fiebrig, and these unfortunately bear no exact data. A few (including the type of Janthinosoma paraguayensis) were collected by Vezényi, mostly at Asuncion in 1904. Though not large, the collection contains a high percentage of apparently undescribed forms, which are dealt with below. The holotypes of two of the new species are in the collection of the Budapest Museum, but in those cases where the species has been described from a number of cotypes, the material has been divided between the Budapest Museum and the British Museum. Since little seems to have been recorded concerning the mosquitos of Paraguay, I give first a list of all the species included in the collection.

In this Bulletin for May 1918 (Vol. ix, pt. 1) some species of Tachinidae were described from India. It was the intention at the time to deposit the types in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.), but owing to war conditions it was considered advisable to retain them in Canada until a later date. In March of this year (1922) the type material was sent to the British Museum; a set of paratypes of most of the species was retained for the National Collection at Ottawa; and another, but larger, set of paratypes was sent to Mr. C. F. C. Beeson, the Forest Entomologist, at Dehra Dun, India.

In the course of my investigation of the serious pest of palms, Oryctes rhinoceros, it was observed that a great proportion of the larvae work their way several inches below the floor of the manure pit in which they thrive, for pupation; and it occurred to the writer that attempts should be made to prevent the return journey by the insects as adults. Now the larvae and adults are of about equal girth, but as the former are soft-bodied they can squeeze themselves through holes which are impassable for the rigid-bodied adult. A sheet of expanded metal with meshes 12 by 24 mm. will let the larvae through but not the adults, and therefore should prevent the escape of beetles from manure pits in which the floor has been carefully covered with this metal. How far the idea will be of practical application in the control of the pest under the varying conditions in which manure is stored remains to be seen, but this preliminary note is written to drew attention not to any remedy but to the principle itself, which is important and has a wider application than to the insect from the study of which it was first derived. It has been found, for example, that it operates in the case of flies also, the holes through which the maggots may be able to pass being impassable for the adults. In the case of the house-fly a perforated zinc sheet will let the maggots through, but not the adults, and a trap is under trial in which the flies are attracted to suitable material and the maggots resulting from oviposition have to pass for pupation through a perforated zinc sheet into a chamber from which the flies cannot escape. The success of this trap as well as of the lines of attack now opened up against Oryctes rhinoceros remains to be seen, but the principle is, I believe, of sufficient importance for early attention to be drawn to it in the pages of this journal.

In the course of a search for parasites of Cercopidae in Central America, made on behalf of the Government of Trinidad in 1916 and 1917, I came across a froghopper of the genus Clastoptera destroying the flowers of cacao in various localities in Panama and just over the border in Costa Rica.