MYRMELEON LIBELLULOIDES. Alis fusco punctatis maculatisque corpore nigro
flavoque maculato. (Expans. Alar. 4 unc. 9 lin.)
SYN. Myrmeleon Libelluloides, _Linn. Syst. Nat._ 1. 2. _p._ 913. 1.
_Fabr. Ent. Syst._ 2. 92. 1.? _Latr. Gen. Crust. & Ins._ 3. 191.
Libella turcica major alis locustæ, _Pet. Gaz._ 6. _t._ 3. _f._ 1.
HABITAT: Smyrna (_Drury_). "In Europa australiori et per totam Africam"
(_Latreille_).
Head dark yellow, divided by a black line, which runs along it from the
thorax. Antennæ black and clubbed, small at the base, and gradually
increasing to their extremities. Thorax brownish yellow; having a black
line running along its upper part, and two small black spots at the base
of the superior wings, being covered with greyish hairs. Abdomen about an
inch and a quarter long, yellow, with a black line on the top, and one on
each side; the male having two small horny tails issuing from the
extremity. Wings membranaceous and pellucid (the inferior ones being as
long as the superior), and elegantly adorned with a great number of dark
spots of various shapes and sizes.
Fabricius gives the Cape of Good Hope as the habitat of this species,
referring not only to the present figure, but also to that given in Vol. 3.
Plate 41. which is said by Drury to have been brought from Sierra Leone.
This is the more inexcusable, because Drury expressly observed in a note,
"There is a species found near the Cape of Good Hope very much like this,
but distinctly different," although in the synoptical appendix to the third
volume, he gives the large species from Sierra Leone as a variety of M.
Libelluloides.
{105}EUPTILON ORNATUM.
Plate XLVI. fig. 2.
ORDER: Neuroptera. SECTION: Filicornes. FAMILY: Myrmeleonidæ, _Leach_.