10 
WORK IN EUROPE 
also done some excellent work in Diptera (compare my notice about 
Zeller as a Dipterologist , Part IT, Chapter XVII). This collection 
afforded me the necessary material in specimens for study and 
comparison. 
While in the United States, my principal task had consisted, as 
I have shown, in working up, in collaboration with Loew, the Dip¬ 
tera of the North American fauna. Nevertheless, my favorite study 
was always in the direction of classification. iVIy very first publi¬ 
cation, in 1854, foreshadowed the improved arrangement of the 
Tipulidae, which I more or less brought to maturity (1859-1869) 
before leaving America. Once settled in Europe, I considered my 
task on North American Diptera as concluded, and attempted to 
extend my horizon by the study of Asiatic, African, and Australian 
forms. Preparatory to these new studies, I began by compiling a 
Catalogue of all the previously described Diptera 1 from all parts of 
the world, excluding Europe (together with Siberia and Central 
Asia, which I considered as belonging, zoologically, to Europe) and 
North America north of Panama. This task took me several 
months; but, once done, it proved an immense resource for my 
future descriptive work. I published descriptions of Diptera from 
the Malay Archipelago , from New Guinea, from the Philippine 
Islands, and from Central America , 77 (1881-1882), 83 (1882), 111 
(1886-1887). I also developed my classification of the Tipulidae , 
by describing new forms peculiar to recently explored regions, 115 
(1886) and 118 (1887). 
Although in preparing these publications I acquired a good deal 
of morphological knowledge, I soon became aware that, owing to 
the very imperfect state of the classification in most of the families 
of Diptera, and to the old routine methods of description, this kind 
of promiscuous descriptive work did not satisfy my entomological 
conscience. As I expressed it (Biol. Centr.-Amer., Diptera , 111 
(1886), p. 75): “The mere describer of a limited collection who 
attempts at the same time to improve the classification may be 
compared to a traveller who, having his own road to make, finds 
1 As this Catalogue is incomplete, and was prepared merely for my own use, it was 
never intended for publication, and remains in manuscript. Nevertheless, it may still 
prove useful in future for controlling an independent publication of the same kind. 
