13 
WORK IN EUROPE 
During the last twelve years, many investigations were begun 
by me in different directions, and inchoate papers kept back for the 
sake of emendation, when ill-health, the result of overwork, inter¬ 
fering with my projects, reminded me of the necessity of bringing 
my entomological career to an appropriate conclusion. This con¬ 
clusion I offer in the present “ Record,” and in the commen¬ 
tated “ List ” of my writings ready for publication. My successive 
papers on the so-called Oxen-born bees of the Ancients ( Bugonia , 
133, 142, 147 (1893-1895)), although they concern folk-lore, phil¬ 
ology, and even theology, rather than entomology, have been 
included in the “ List,” because they contain a history of the geo¬ 
graphical distribution and of the very remarkable wanderings of a 
common dipteron, Eristalis tenar, the drone-fly. 
The historical and critical paragraphs which I have introduced 
in this “ Record ” will be accepted, I hope, as a useful contribution 
to the history of dipterology. Criticism has always been distaste¬ 
ful to me on account of the personal animus which is almost un¬ 
avoidably connected with it. In rare instances only have I published 
criticisms, or rejoinders, on the spur of the moment. In a most 
provoking case, when Professor Brauer published his “ Offenes 
Schreiben, als Antwort auf Herrn Baron Osten-Sacken’s Critical 
R eview etc. (1883), which was nothing but an unjust and undig¬ 
nified effervescence against me, I did not make use of an excellent 
occasion for a retort, which an egregious error in that pamphlet 
offered me. I waited for fourteen years, but then the pointing 
out of that lapsus became unavoidable ( Berl . Ent. Zeit ., 1897, 
p. 148-149; 162 (1897)). Many criticisms, which I have kept in 
petto for years, have found their place in this “ Record ” as a mere 
matter of history. Entomological literature would become intoler¬ 
able if it were considered every one’s duty to criticize and contradict 
in print the many errors which continually rise to the surface. But 
I hold it as useful that authors, who have some right to believe 
themselves competent, should engage occasionally in the work of 
purifying the literature of their domain. If such a rule were gen¬ 
erally adopted, superficial writers would be more mindful of the 
Russian proverb : “ Whatever is written with the pen , cannot be hewn 
out with the axeC And the conviction that, sooner or later, justice 
