B. cuprea Hutton.

B. cuprea, Hutton, l c, p. 6

♀. Eyes bare, broadly dichoptic, front brilliant shiny black; antennae not slender, situated below middle line, barely half length of head-width and comparatively shorter than those of violacea; 2nd joint black and bristly; flagellum blackish-brown—except for the first segment, which is tawny and broader than the others—composed of 7 segments of about equal length^* covered by a dense stiff pubescence and terminating in 3 apical hairs; the ultimate segment, though short, is about twice the length of the penultimate, which bears longer hairs on the anterior margin. Occiput depressed.

Thorax humped and rounded above, brilliant bronze sometimes with a deep bluish-green sheen; scutellum coloured as dorsum, the 4 spines brownish-yellow but not large.

Legs tawny, not banded, onychotarsi black, protarsi about half the length of whole joint; posterior femora not thickened.

Wings faintly tinged with yellow, the stigma and veins yellow; anterior branch of 3rd vein arising at right angles and slightly curved to the costa (fig 17), the 1st section of the 3rd vein shorter than anterior cross-vein; discal cell apically acute; 3 posterior veins, but the 1st and 2nd arise from a common pedicle, the 1st and 3rd posterior cells being thus contiguous at apex of the discal cell; 3rd posterior vein distinctly separated from the 2nd basal cell; 5th and 4th vein evanescent toward their origin, the latter somewhat indistinct. Halteres tawny.

Abdomen ovate, broader than the thorax at the widest part, shiny blackish - brown. From the apical segment project a pair of short, 2-jointed appendages, the 1st joint tawny and longer than the 2nd, which is black, ovate, and terminates in long hairs.

♂. “Eyes contiguous; abdomen narrow and linear; the 2nd posterior cell petiolate” (Hutton).

There is now no male specimen in Hutton's collection, and as I have no representatives of this species beyond Hutton's female type above described a fuller description is at present impossible.

♀ Length, 4 mm.; wing, 3 mm.

Habitat.—Auckland and Maketu (Broun)