WORK IN EUROPE 
11 
his progress slow and his road bad.” This feeling of dissatis¬ 
faction led me to look out for new methods of description, based 
upon the discovery of new descriptive characters, and thus I hit 
upon my System of Chaetotaxy , 80 (1881), 102 (1884), the use¬ 
fulness of which has been fully recognized since. 
The same intention, to introduce new descriptive characters, led 
me to publish my papers: Suggestions, etc., 128 (1891), On the 
Characters of the three Divisions, etc., 130 (1892), and On the atavic 
Index-Characters, etc., 138 (1894). The second, and principal of 
these papers, Berl. Ent. Zeit., 1892 : On the Characters of the three 
Divisions of Diptera: Nemocera vera , Nemocera anomala, and 
Eremocliaeta , contains two important innovations : — 
(1) The attempts of Loeiv, Brauer , and others to obliterate the 
distance separating the Nemocera from the Brachycera , as indicated 
by Latreille (Macquart merely supplied the name for the second 
group), by means of what they took for transitional forms, are 
proved to rest upon a fallacy. “ No transitional forms have , as yet , 
been discovered between these groups, either in the living or in the 
fossil faunas. We do not yet know a single dipteron, the position 
of which , between the two groups, can be called in doubt" (loc. cit., 
p. 421). 1 For this reason, in order to maintain the separation be¬ 
tween the Nemocera and Brachycera, instead of the two suborders 
of Diptera proposed by Brauer ( Orthorrhapha and Cyclorrhapha ) 
I introduced three: Orthorrhapha Nemocera, Orthorrhapha Brachy¬ 
cera , and Cyclorrhapha Athericera , thus combining the nomencla¬ 
ture of Latreille derived from the antennae, with that of Brauer 
derived from the mode of transformation. 
This step of mine was not exactly an innovation ; it was rather 
a restoration. After the lapse of a century since Latreille’s earli¬ 
est publications, the classification of the Diptera not only had 
not advanced in its principal feature, but had run the risk of 
a revolution which would have driven it back behind Latreille s 
position. The prevention of such a retrogression is perhaps the 
principal service I rendered to dipterology in my work on its 
classification. 
1 Transitional forms must of course have existed at some previous geological age 
but such forms have not yet been discovered. 
