30 
THE BEGINNINGS OF MY RELATIONS WITH LOEW 
More than two years passed after this letter, during which I 
heard nothing from Loew, although I had written him several times, 
and had sent him a first consignment of Diptera, as well as a copy 
of my Catalogue of North American Diptera, which I had pub¬ 
lished in the mean time. The solution of this mystery came in a 
letter, dated from Meseritz, October 1, 1858. Loew, probably in 
consequence of some vague association in his mind between the 
United States and the Declaration of Independence, had directed 
his letters to the Russian Legation in Philadelphia, without hav¬ 
ing noticed that my letters were always dated from Washington. 
After a long interval the letters were returned to him by the Post 
Office, and he had the mortification of sending them back to me 
with a doleful explanation. 
In my “ Introduction,” p. 4, I said: “ After a rather long, 
gwase-tentative correspondence, during the first years of my resi¬ 
dence in America, about the mode and conditions of our proposed 
co-operation, we came to the following agreement,” etc. The 
nature of this agreement, as well as its final result for the benefit 
of American dipterology, having been explained in the “ Introduc¬ 
tion,” I shall confine myself here to some particulars concerning 
my epistolary intercourse with Loew. 
First of all, I feel bound to acknowledge Loew’s conscientious¬ 
ness and painstaking accuracy in rendering me an account of all 
the successive consignments of Diptera which lie received from me. 
The species were not only exactly enumerated, but almost every 
one of them separately discussed. When a species could be recog¬ 
nized among published descriptions, the probability of its exact 
determination was discussed ; new, or probably new, species were 
noticed as such. 
This mode of treatment gave rise to an abundant and mutually 
useful interchange of ideas. That I was not successful in my 
attempts to come to an understanding with Loew about the ter¬ 
minology of the organs of Diptera, will be shown when I come to 
gebeten habe, mir ein Graf von Hoffmannsegg zu sein, wobei ich mieh mit Meister 
Meigen vergleicben zu wollen, wahrhaftig nicht unbescheiden genug bin.” — Count 
Hoffmannsegg (l7Gb-184!)), a Saxon nobleman and naturalist, sent Meigen a collection 
of Diptera from Portugal, but did not publish concerning it himself. 
