. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Entom Supp. 22 H. STEMPFFER One of them does in fact have a label referring to this description. Examination of the fore tarsi shows that one of these is a male, the other a female but both lack the extremity of the abdomen and, besides, are rather discoloured, probably on account of age. Among the hundreds of specimens of Ornipholidotos which I have had the opportunity of examining, collected more or less recently, I have found none which can undoubtedly be regarded as exactly matching Dewitz's " type " specimens of muhata. In the a
. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Entom Supp. 22 H. STEMPFFER One of them does in fact have a label referring to this description. Examination of the fore tarsi shows that one of these is a male, the other a female but both lack the extremity of the abdomen and, besides, are rather discoloured, probably on account of age. Among the hundreds of specimens of Ornipholidotos which I have had the opportunity of examining, collected more or less recently, I have found none which can undoubtedly be regarded as exactly matching Dewitz's " type " specimens of muhata. In the absence of genitalia for comparison and in view of the inconclusive nature of any comparison based on external characters in this genus, it is, therefore, impossible at present to identify Dewitz's species, which must remain a species dubium. On the other hand the male genitalia figured by Bethune Baker as those of muhata are instantly recognizable as those of the well known species 0. kirbyi (Pentila kirbyi Aurivillius, 1895), the holotype of which I was able to dissect in 1947, and of which I have examined the genitalia of some fifty specimens from various African localities. We have therefore a case in which (1) the species named as the type-species of the genus is a species dubium (muhata) and (2) the species on which the description of the genus was in fact based is an easily recognized species, currently known as kirbyi. In order to overcome the uncertainties of this situation I am applying to the Inter- national Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to set aside all type-fixations for the genus Ornipholidotos made prior to their ruling and to rule that the type-species of that genus be Pentila kirbyi Aurivillius (1895, Ent. Tidskr. 16 : 198) as defined by Stempffer (1947, Revue Zool. Bot. afr. 40 : 169).. Fig. 12. Ornipholidotos kirbyi (Aurivillius), <$ Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhance
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