TRANSFER OF LOEW’S COLLECTION TO CAMBRIDGE 
89 
progressed very rapidly during the following summer (1877), and 
he was hardly able to transact any serious matter with me when I 
visited him in autumn. 
I sailed for Europe in June, 1877, and spent a fortnight in Guben 
in September. And now comes the strangest incident of this whole 
transaction. Among Loew’s letters which I have before me there 
is one, upon which an annotation in my own handwriting explains 
that this letter had been written by Loew in Berlin in March and 
April, 1875, but, instead of being sent to me at that time, was kept 
in Guben, until it was handed to me by Loew himself two years and 
a half later , in September, 1877, when I paid him my last visit! 
This letter had been begun a few days after Loew’s last letter to 
me, of March 20-22, 1875, which I have characterized above as 
long and rambling. A fortnight elapsed before Loew added a par¬ 
agraph to this new letter (on April 14), and then it remained in 
his hands, unfinished. What explanation Loew gave me on that 
occasion, I do not remember; at any rate an explanation for me 
was unnecessary, because, as I said above (p. 8G), “ it was evi¬ 
dent that Loew had become sick of the insincere game he was 
playing with me.” 
The old letter, handed to me in such a strange manner, begins 
thus ( translation ) : — 
“My Dear Sir and Friend: — Your letter of March 5 [1875] arrived 
two days after the posting of my last altogether meaningless letter. I ad¬ 
mire your vigorous entomological activity, and envy you the leisure you are 
enjoying, and of which I am entirely deprived ; you may imagine how 
anxious I am to he at home. That you have succeeded in unravelling, I may 
say off-hand (‘so beian’), the genus Syrphus s. str., I admire! 1 I stuck in 
a jungle of uncertainty in attempting to determine the species of that group. 
It would be splendid, if you succeeded likewise with Sphaerophoria, the 
most difficult among the genera of Syrphidaef etc. 
I reproduce the German text of this part of the letter : “ Mein hoch geehrtester 
Herr und Freund, Ihr Brief vora 5. Marz [1875] traf zwei Tage nach Abgangmeines 
vorigen, recht inhaltslosen Briefes liier an. Ich bewundere Ihr riistiges entomolo- 
gisches Sehaffen und beneide Sie darum, da ich bier gar keine Musse zu gewinnen 
1 This is an allusion to my paper: “On the North American species of the genus 
Syrphus (in the narrowest sense)”; Proc. Boston Society Natural History 1875 my 
No. 47, 1875). 
