LOEW AS A DIPTEKOLOGIST 
119 
rhapha Brachycera , I shall be less circumstantial, as my acquaint¬ 
ance with this suborder is comparatively limited. 
It could not have been expected that in 1860-1862 (in the “ Dip- 
teren-Fauna Siidafrika’s ” and in “Monographs,” Vol. I, p. 15— 
18) Loew should have had a clear insight into the grouping of 
the Beridina , Xylophagidae , and Chiromyzidae , for it is not quite 
cleared up to this day ; and yet he might have avoided the mistakes 
of placing Chiromyza among the Beridina (“ Dipteren-Fauna Siid¬ 
afrika’s,” p. 1, 1860) ; of confounding ( ibidem ) Metoponia Macq. 
(an Australian Cliiromyzid) with the North American Berid, Beris 
fuscitarsis Say (for which I later proposed the generic name Allo- 
gnosta, Berl. Ent. Zeit ., 1888, p. 297) 1 ; and of not noticing that 
Latreille’s Xylophagus is our Subula , and that his Bachystomus is 
nothing but our Xylophagus described from a specimen with muti¬ 
lated antennae (compare Osten Sacken, Berl. Ent. Zeit., 1882, p. 
379). The fact that the family Xylophagidae had no consistency 
whatever, being based upon an erroneous juxtaposition of two very 
different forms, Xylophagus and Subula , was at that tune perhaps not 
obvious enough for Loew to perceive. About the Sections Sar- 
gina , Odontomyina , and Pachygastrina , Loew has produced excel¬ 
lent descriptive work. 
In preparing his monograph of the European Tabanidae (1858), 
Loew did not notice that the development of the ocellar tubercle, 
combined with other characters, offers a very good basis for the 
establishment of a separate genus. This oversight led him to 
reject the genus Therioplectes proposed by Zeller sixteen years 
before, without perceiving that, as I have later shown, a slight 
modification of the definition makes this genus answer its purpose 
very well. Compare my Prodromus of the Tabanidae (1875), p. 
425 (43, 1875). 
1 In the “Dipteren-Fauna Siidafrika’s” (1860), p. 1 at bottom, Loew says that 
Metoponia Macq. is much more related to Beris, than to Chiromyza, a statement which 
is erroneous, because based upon the misinterpretation of the genus Metoponia. What 
Loew further says in the same place, “ that Inopus Walk. (Ins. Saund.) is the same as 
Metoponia Macq.,” is incomprehensible, because Metoponia Loew (nec Macq.) is Allo- 
rjnosta O. S., and the latter genus has nothing to do with Inopus Walk. As to the true 
Australian Metoponia Macq., “ Diptera Exotica,” Suppl., Vol. II, p. 28, Tab. I, f. 4, it is 
quite different from Inopus, has a different venation, and belongs to the Chiromyzidae. 
