84 
TRANSFER OF LOEW’S COLLECTION TO CAMBRIDGE 
collections, I had undertaken, independently of Loew, to prepare 
materials for the new edition of the Catalogue of North American 
Diptera, and besides this, I often received from various quarters, 
and more frequently than before, collections of Diptera for deter¬ 
mination, which were sometimes of considerable size. Prof. J. II. 
Comstock, for instance, sent me a very valuable collection for that 
purpose. I find that between May, 1874, and May, 1875, I wrote 
fifteen letters to Loew; and I must render him the justice to say 
that he was very conscientious in answering my numerous ques¬ 
tions about details of nomenclature. When he was in Berlin, he 
had of course to postpone his answers until his return to Guben. 
During the same interval I received ten letters from him, most of 
them very long and rambling, and many of them written in the 
Chamber of Deputies in Berlin. 
In a letter of June 19, 1874, wishing to accelerate the working 
up of some families of Diptera, I suggested to Loew the idea that 
the North American Muscidae Calyptratae, of which there was plenty 
of material, but which had not been worked up at all, should be 
entrusted to some German entomologist of the younger generation, 
for the purpose of being described under the supervision of Loew. 
I was willing to remunerate that entomologist out of my own 
pocket, and to undertake the translation of the manuscript into 
English. I was thinking of Kowarz , who would have been per¬ 
fectly willing to undertake a work which, besides its scientific 
interest, would have afforded him a welcome addition to his rather 
meagre income. My proposal was so serious that on the very 
next day (June 20, 1874) I wrote a second letter to Loew, to ex¬ 
plain and develop my proposition. My good will came to nothing, 
in consequence of Loew’s indifference. He received the proposal 
rather coolly, and said (letter of July 4, 1874) that Schiner alone 
would have been able to undertake the work. Unfortunately 
Schiner had died the year before, and the idea of Schiner working 
under the guidance of his enemy, Loew, was preposterous. A 
counter-proposition which Loew offered me was just like him. lie 
said that if I was willing to spend money for the description of 
North American Diptera, it would perhaps be expedient to publish 
plates, with figures representing generic types, with appended do- 
