LOEW’S FIRST VOLUME OF THE “MONOGRAPHS 
49 
In the Monographs, etc., Vol. I (18G2), Loew gives up Haliday’s 
guidance, and arranges the families apparently hap-hazard. In the 
Nemocera , Haliday had placed the Mycetophilidae (including Sciara 
and Zygoneura ) next to the Cecidomyiidae, which is correct. Loew 
separated these two families by a long interval, inserting the Ble- 
pharoceridae, Psychodidae, and Tipulidae between them! Among 
his Cecidomyiidae we find Zygoneura and Biamesa Meig.! The 
latter he considers a synonym of Lestremia Macq.! (loc. cit., p. 7). 
The Brachycera were arranged by Haliday in Walker’s work 
(185G) as follows : Stratiomyiidae, Xylophagidae, Tabanidae, Acro- 
ceridae (placed here on account of the three pulvilli), Asilidae, 
Leptidae, Bombyliidae, Scenopinidae, Empidae, Bolichopodidae, 
Lonchopteridae , Platypezidae, Pipunculidae , Syrphidae , Conopidae ; 
after which follows the large division Museidae. Although Ilali- 
day correctly placed the Syrphidae just before his Musculae , it is 
strange that he did not recognize the importance of the generali¬ 
zation introduced by Latreille (1825) with his division Athericera, 
embracing both Syrphidae and Museidae , and founded not only 
upon their mode of transformation, but upon characters of the 
imago which have been overlooked by later authors. 
Loew, in the same volume of the Monographs, made an incompre¬ 
hensibly retrograde step in placing the Syrphidae quite far from 
the Museidae , and in introducing the whole series of the Lonclio- 
pteridae, Ilybotidae , Empidae , Tachydromidae , and Bolichopodidae 
between them! He seems to have been entirely unaware of the 
existence of the large division Athericera Latr. (1825), and when 
Brauer adopted the division in Orthorrhapha and Cyclorrhapha, the 
latter of which coincides with Latreille’s Athericera , Loew accepted 
this subdivision as an unexpected novelty ! (Compare my “ Sug¬ 
gestions towards a Better Grouping,” etc., in the Ent. Monthly 
Mag., 1891, p. 85, 121, 1891.) 
In consequence of these arbitrary arrangements in the Mono¬ 
graphs, Vol. I (1862), Loew did not escape the “disagreeable criti¬ 
cisms ” he was so much afraid of. S c h i n e r published a rather se¬ 
vere one ( Verb. zool.-bot. Gesellsch., Wien, 18G4, p. 209), although 
the “ System ” proposed by himself was not much better. In the 
Novara work (1868) Schiner was perfectly right in adopting 
4 
