Manchester Museum On the collection of British Diptera in the Manchester Museum The Manchester Museum’s collection of British Diptera numbers

dried specimens (both identified and undetermined), over 22,000 specimens preserved in spirit, and over 1,600 slide preparations. This Diptera collection contains 3347 species overall, with 48% species coverage of the British fauna (see Table). Some groups are particularly well-represented (e.g. Tipulidae and Limoniidae), others are clearly underrepresented, for instance, Cecidomyiidae (6 % of the British fauna), Sciaridae (30%), Phoridae (13%) or Agromyzidae (21%). Only a few small families are as yet absent from the Museum’s collection (see Table). The entire Diptera collection is fully labelled and contains lots of local material, particularly from Lancashire and Cheshire. The Museum’s collection of dry specimens of British Diptera was first assembled by John Hardy, the Assistant Keeper in Entomol-ogy (1889-1918), and by the end of his term of keepership should have consisted of about 500 species. Harry Britten (1919-1938)