Golden Hoverer-fly New to Britain

14

GOLDEN HOVERER-FLY NEW TO BRITAIN.

a good many specimens. As far as I rememher his own collection, though insured against fire for 250/., was bought by the Museum for only twenty-five pounds ; I believe it to be there still, but my brothcr thinks part was sold by auction at Stevens' in Covent Garden : Ipswich Museum may retain the date of such a ransference.

Mr. Garrett Garrett died at his youngest son's house at Clapham in 1890, aged eighty-two. Not long before his decease, this photo [here produced] was taken in Ipswich, well illustrating the invariable black clothes with long-tailed coat, no collar but the oldfashioned white scarf or stock ; he always wore a top-hat, but in it put no specimens for which he carried a corked collecting-box, wherein they were pinned immediately upon capture. As a boy I was interested in my father's scientific pursuits ; but after Ordination 1 had to give them up, because my time was fully occupied as curate of a large industrial parish. [Hence the Revd.

James makes no reference to the voluminous notes and records contributed by his father to the Revd. E. N. Bloomfield's 1890 ' Lepidoptera of Suffolk,' to the eight Queen-of-Spain Fritillaries Argynnis Lathonia he captured around Ipswich in 1868 (Entom. ii, p. 340), and other brilliant gesta. One now regrets the earlyVictorian collector was so d u m b : we have never seen a word in print from Mr. Garrett.]

GOLDEN HOVERER-FLY NEW TO BRITAIN. BY

THE

HON.

SECRETARY.

YET anothcr Suffolk treasure !—Our local Members had been working the marshes of the River Deben at Brandeston fairly continuously this year, since the profuse Angelica first began to blossom on 25 July ; so plentiful were these flowers and so attractive to multitudes of Diptera and Hymenoptera that one feit something really rare must inevitably appear upcn them. But a tedious procession of mediocrity persisted as their visitants through August and early the next month. And then, in hot sun and soft southerly air at 11.30 on 10 September, one's wildest hopes became fully realised. For, flying round one of the sevenfeet blossoms, I detected a truly glorified sort of an Eristalis-fly, whereof several species abounded ; but this was much larger and more sedate than E. tenax, and glittered gildedly. He caught my eye, as is the wont of Flies, and flashed off towards the next tall head ; but had no time to alight ere my net enmeshed him. Even so, not tili a lens showed the niveous tip of his sooty antennae,

GOLDEN HOVERER-FLY

NEW TO

BRITAIN.

15

would I believe him Callicera aenea, England's only known kind and, Col. Yerbury considered, ' one of our rarest Diptera.' Protracted search on adjacent flower-heads, both then and upon my return an hour later, as well as an hour in similarly hot sun at noon on 12th, produced no second specimen.—And, indeed, C. aenea, nearly always occurs singly in Britain, whence it is known in only Devon, Somerset, Glamorgan, Hants, Sussex, Herts, Lines, and Derby. Its sole permanent home is the New Forest, where my old friend Frederick Carlstrom Adams esq. used annually to take it before his death in Feb. 1920, since which time it has occasionally occurred to me there in July. Its lifehistory remains unknown ; but that of a Scots species, Callicera rufa, Schum. (Yerburyi, Verr. E M M . 1904, 229), is detailed at Entom. 1938, 97 & 1939, 228.

As soon as I got home, however, i t became obvious that my capture was neither of the above species, both of which have the thorax black and abdomen immaculate, the former is about 11 m m . in length with a wing-expanse of 25 mm. and the latter always appreciably smaller, whereas the Brandeston female is 15 m m . long and expands no less than 34 m m . Was it new to Science or one of the five (only) other Eurpoean kinds, all of which were described from Italy by Signore C. Rondani in his 1857 DipterologitC Italicae Prodromus (ii, 209, Parma) ? Eventually I sent it to Mr. Technical Assistant R. L. Coe of the British Museum, who considers it to be the species described by Rondani under the name Callicera Spinohe, originally in Ann. Soc. Entom. de France (2) ii, 1844, p. 64. This differs f r o m both the above in a large pale triangular mark on each side of the basal segment, mesonotum unicolorous golden and not black, entirely orange femora and distinet infumation towards alar apices ; and f i o m the Italian Roserii, Rond., in its unicolorous femora and darker, rich-orange pubescence, which becomes dense all round scutellum, abdomen and segmental apices of the latter.—The most probable method of importation would be in Mediterranean timber, for which one cannot conceive a less likely period than the present, nor has any such come to my knowledge. So we must suppose C. Spinolce to have long lived here undetected.