64 
LOEW’S WORK ON AMBER DIPTERA 
My special study of Tipulidae brought with it the duty of criti¬ 
cising Loew’s paper of 1850. In the “ Monographs of North Amer¬ 
ican Diptera,” Vol. IV, p. 192 and 293 (1869), after having seen the 
original Amber specimens in Loew’s collection, I pointed out that 
the four species of Cylindrotoma , which Loew believed to have 
recognized in Amber, were Limnophilae. This error of his is the 
more strange as, only a year before 1850 (in the Stett. Ent. Zeit., 
1849, p. 341), he had published a correct account of the genus 
Cylindrotoma. In describing C. nigriventris, from Siberia, he had 
stated that C. distinctissima should be considered as the type of 
the genus, and that the other two species introduced into it by 
Macquart (its founder, 1834) did not belong to it. 
In Chapter II of this “ Record ” I have shown how, several years 
later, Loew had paid very little attention to my classification of 
Tipulidae (that of 1859), and had, with my work in his hand, mis¬ 
taken a Teucholabis (O. S.) for a Rhamphidia. In my second 
monograph of Tipulidae (1869) I had therefore every reason to 
caution the public against the uncritical acceptance of the four 
species of Rhamphidia which Loew believed to have discovered in 
Amber, as well as against the other genera in his paper on Amber 
Tipulidae (O. S. in “Monographs,” Vol. IV, p. 105, about Rham¬ 
phidia , and p. 192-193 about the other genera). No wonder that 
with such an insufficient knowledge of the Tipulidae Loew should 
have mixed up two altogether different genera: his fossil Toxor- 
rhina (1850) and his recent Toxorrhina (1851). In this case, he 
had been led astray by the extraordinary long, filiform proboscis, 
common to both, without noticing that the recent species has a 
venation unique among Tipulidae, while his fossil Toxorrhina has 
a normal venation. 
When I questioned Loew concerning the principles he had fol¬ 
lowed in establishing his genera of fossil Tipulidae, he gave me (in 
a letter of February 5, 1865) a rather long, but very unsatisfactory 
explanation, which he summed up thus : “ I had hoped in this way 
somewhat like that of Anisomera, but the discal cell is closed, while it is wanting in the 
latter genus. This species can undoubtedly be considered as the type of a new genus, 
which it will be time enough to describe when the male is discovered” (Peters’s 
“ Reise,” etc., p. 2 of the separate on Diptera). 
