LOEW AS A DIPTEROLOGIST 
127 
resource, even in this paper. If he had reduced Chaetotaxy to a 
system, he would have found it most serviceable in his later works. 
The thoracic bristles, for instance, were too much neglected by him 
in his publications on Ortalidae. 
Of Loew’s greatest delusion, the supposed coalescence of the 
two larger divisions adopted by Latreille, Nemocera and non- 
Nemocera (Brachycera Macq.), I have already spoken above, on 
p. 48, as well as in my “ Introduction,” p. 11. Macquart showed 
a clearer insight into that matter when he said (in his “ Insectes 
Dipteres du Nord de la France,” 1823) “ that the Nemocera con¬ 
stituted almost a different order, and that the difference between 
them and the other Diptera might almost be compared to that 
between the Hymenoptera, for instance, and the Neuroptera.” 
(This passage has been quoted by me in the Berl. Eat. Zeit ., 1892, 
p. 419 ; 130 , 1892 ). 
If Loew (as I said on p. 106) did not publish much on the 
biology of Diptera, it was because he seems, in general, to have 
taken but little interest in living Diptera, and in this he stood in 
striking contrast to Zeller. Loew’s principal preoccupation when 
he was in the field, hunting flies, seems to have been to bag as many 
as possible. A characteristic paper in this respect is his “ Eine 
dipterologische Razzia auf dem Gebiete des naturw. Vereins fur 
Sachsen und Thiiringen ” ( Zeitschr . gesammt. Naturw., August, 
1857). Loew reproaches the local “Natural History Society of 
Saxony and Thiiringen ” with their sluggishness in collecting Dip¬ 
tera, and shows them what can be done in their district. lie 
spent a week in July in collecting near Wernigerode, in Prussian 
Saxony. The season notwithstanding, which during that year 
had everywhere been unusually unfavorable for insects (“ ein 
besonderes insectenarmes Jahr”), and in spite of the unpropitious 
weather, which prevailed during the week of his collecting, Loew 
caught two hundred and forty-seven species of Brachycera alone, 
of which he published an annotated list. He did not count the 
Diptera which he had merely seen, but not caught (“ Die Aufzah- 
lung von mir bios gesehener Dipteren scheint mir bedenklich,” 
etc.). Among the captured Diptera seven species were described 
as new. 
