Linnaeus has described two species of this family in his genera Hemerobius and Myrmeleon. The Hemerobius longicornis L., Mus. Lud. Ulr. p. 402, u. 2 (1764), is after his short description certainly the well known Ascalaphus longicornis (L.) that occurs in Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain and Algeria. The second described Myrmeleon barbarum, Syst. Natur. Ed. XII, p. 914, n. 5 (1768), however, is misunderstood by the authors. Fabricius, the author of the genus Ascalaphus, System. Entom. p. 313 (1775), enumerates it as the first species in this genus and gives a copy of Linnaeus’ description. But this genus, being restricted by Lefèbvre and the later authors for the wellknown palaearctic species with coloured wings, cannot be limited to barbarum again. Most of the later authors, probably only judging after the locality and not comparing Linnaeus’ description, have described different species with coloured wings as Asc. barbarus. So Latreille, Rambur, Lucas and many others held it for the, in North-Africa common, Asc. ictericus Charp. Olivier and Charpentier have described the european coccajus Schiff., Petagna italicus F. and Burmeister longicornis L. under the name Asc. barbarus L. Stein (1863) and Hagen, having used the description, were brought to the conclusion that the south-european Asc. australis F. is a synonym of Asc. barbarus (L.), and australis being the type of the genus Theleproctophylla Lefèbvre, the name was changed in Th. barbara (L). All later authors accepted this synonymy.