THE BEGINNINGS OF MY RELATIONS WITH LOEW 
31 
judge Leow as a dipterologist, and not merely as a correspondent 
(in Chapter XVI). 
Some other details about my correspondence with Loew are not 
without interest, as they illustrate the peculiarities of his character. 
He usually wrote on a light bluish letter-paper 22.6 by 14.1 centi¬ 
meters in size. His handwriting was perfect, but exceedingly 
minute. On a page of that size he would easily place 60 lines, 
but sometimes much more. For instance, in a letter of March 18, 
1859, four pages contain successively 74, 85, 94, and 81 lines. 
From the very beginning, I had begged him to use Latin char¬ 
acters, as less trying to the eyes than the Gothic ones, and he had 
complied with my request. Loew was evidently proud of his cal¬ 
ligraphy, and on two occasions it pleased him to produce master¬ 
pieces of it. On a space of 12 centimeters by 14, he wrote out, in 
61 lines, the twenty-seven Latin diagnoses of Japanese Diptera, the 
detailed descriptions of which were afterwards published in the 
Wien. Ent. Monats ., 1858, p. 100-112 (letter of January 8, 1858). 
Not content with that, about a year later (May, 1859) he sent me 
the whole of two articles: “ Die nordamerikanischen Arten . . . 
Tetanocera,” . . . (Wien. Ent. Monats ., 1859, p. 289-300); and 
“ Diptera Americana ab Osten-Sackenio collecta,” decas prima 
(in the same periodical, 1860, p. 79-84) ; that is, seventeen printed 
pages written out on two pages, on his usual letter-paper of 22.6 
by 14.1 centimeters. The first page contains 132 lines, that is on 
the average six lines in the space of a centimeter! (I reproduce 
the first page of this tour de force in facsimile.) The motive 
which makes me insist on this detail is, that the incredible endur¬ 
ance and tenacity exhibited in such a feat is the very quality that 
enabled Loew to accomplish his colossal and, at the same time, his so 
homogeneous and thoroughly finished work in descriptive dipterology. 
The contents of the letters also showed some peculiarities which 
deserve to be noticed, because some of them reappear in Loew’s 
entomological publications. The business part of the letters, as I 
have said above, left generally but little to be desired. But Loew 
was in the habit of introducing extraneous matters, discussions, etc., 
and in such cases his defect of great prolixity appeared to his dis¬ 
advantage. His habit was to write such portions of a letter at 
