A species of Asteia was encountered in numbers in a shallow cave just above high water mark on the West Coast of the South Island about one mile north of the Paringa River on November 16, 1950. It was remarkable for the white aspect of the abdomen both in flight and at rest. The food of the larvae of flies of this family is unknown. If, as seems likely, the flies were breeding in the cave, the likely breeding media are seabird or seal (?) excrement which were noted to be present, or seaweed. Another female was collected by Mr. J. S. Timlin, in a rock crevice on the East Coast of Otago at Karitane, on September 22, 1951. The three localities from which this insect has been recorded are all in the southern half of the South Island, and—since the type material from Stewart Island was almost certainly from a coastal locality—all on the sea coast.

My specimens have been compared with Hutton's type, and I consider them to be the same species. The eyes in my specimens are red, and they show the same tinge in the type. The antennal arista (Fig. 2) is straight, and appears bare at low magnifications, but in both the type and in my specimens has about ten short branches, which are not longer than the basal width of the arista. In the other New Zealand species the arista is zig-zag, with much longer branches, which are visible under low power. The type, as Tonnoir remarks, has the following thoracic chaetotaxy:—Three dorsocentrals, one post-humeral, one presutural, two supra-alars, and one post-alar. In my specimens one of these setae, either the post-alar or one of the supra-alars is absent. The abdomen in the type is wholly black, with the hypopygium lighter in colour, but I believe this to be due to discolouration due to decomposition of the abdominal contents. The abdomen of the Paringa specimens is shown in dorsal view in Figs. 3, 4, and 5. The abdomens of the types of crassinervis Malloch and tonnoiri Malloch are similar in the complete lack of pigmentation ventrally, and its presence only on the anterior half of the dorsum, where there are three sclerites decreasing in size posteriorly. In the female there is no pigmentation or sclerotization of the apical segments. In the male two segments between the third tergite and the hypopygium are unpigmented and unsclerotized. The terminal segments in the male (Figs. 5 and 6) consist of an asymetrical black sclerite covering the dorsal and right pleural regions, with a smaller sub-triangular sclerite on the pleural region on the left side. Caudad of this are the claspers, which are more or less spatulate apically and fused basally. The adeagus (Fig. 7) is characterised by two flexible elements (which may be spiral in some mounts) joining the basal and apical portions and by a claw or hook-like structure at the extreme apex. A rod articulates

Fig. 7.—Asteia levis Hutt., adeagus.