Culex albopictus Skuse, Sp. nov.

Female. — Length of antennae 1*50 ram.; expanse of wings 2.50 x 0.50 mm.; length of body 3 -3.50 mm.

Black with silvery-white markings. Antennae somewhat shorter than the proboscis, joints of the scapus with silvery scales. Head with silvery-white scales on the front and sides. Proboscis five times the length of the palpi, the latter tipped with silvery scales. Thorax traversed by a line of silvery scales for rather more than its anterior half; pleurae spotted with silvery white; scutellum with minute silvery hairs. Abdomen twice the length of the thorax, the segments bordered with a narrow band of silvery scales, and with lateral silvery spots. Legs: femora with a silvery line beneath and slightly tipped with silvery scales; tarsi, the first two joints in the fore and intermediate legs with a narrow silvery-white ring at the base; broad rings at the base of all the joints of the tarsi in the hind legs, the last joint entirely white. In the hind-legs the tibia about one-third longer than the metatarsus. Wings the length of the abdomen, pellucid, iridescent, the veins clothed with linear black scales. Auxiliary vein joining the cocta at a point a little before the posterior branch of the fifth longitudinal vein; middle cross-vein indistinct, shorter than the posterior cross-vein, situated beyond it scarcely a distance equal to twice the length of the latter; first sub-marginal cell longer and narrower than the second posterior cell, their bases opposite or almost opposite; anterior branch of the fifth longitudinal vein originating about midway between the origin of the second longitudinal vein and the tip of the sixth longitudinal.

Hab. — Bengal.

Type in Australian Museum.

Three specimens received from Mr. E. C. Cotes, who informs me that this insect is a great nuisance in Calcutta. The species is 'allied to C. nostoscriptus, Sk., from New South Wales, and C. bancrofti, Sk., from Queensland, hut the silvery ornamentation of the thorax in these latter is of an elaborate pattern (Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W., Yol. I l l (Ser. 2), 1838, pp. 1738, 1710).