134 
LOEW AS A DIPTEROLOGIST 
systematic distribution of which is the clearest. I can hardly hope to complete 
the working up of all the families; but, should I be compelled to desist, it will 
be easy for my successor to continue the work, and to bring it to {(.conclusion. I 
shall be very glad to entrust single families, for the purpose of working them up, 
to dipterologists who may have chosen them for a specialty. And it also will 
give me great pleasure if some of the tried senior workers of the present genera¬ 
tion, or others, of the junior class, of whom there is no lack at present, would 
consent to take a share in a work, the successful consummation of which tran¬ 
scends the power of one single man,” etc. 
In this pompous and diffuse style the Preface goes on for fourteen pages. It 
would be useless to conjecture whether Loew was sincere in anticipating the reali¬ 
zation of this ideal programme for future dipterology, of which he would have 
been the centre. The hard fact remains that, within the next five years he .pub¬ 
lished (as I have shown above) three volumes of purely descriptive work , and had 
prepared materials for a fourth volume. He would have gone on with the publi¬ 
cation of these volumes if, in 1873 (the date of the last volume), he had not sud¬ 
denly gone into politics, and had not since then, until his death in 1879, relegated 
dipterology into the background. That other work, promised with such insistence 
in the high-sounding Preface, never appeared, and an explanation of this delay 
was never given, nor even alluded to in the Prefaces of the second and third vol¬ 
umes. The double title of the first volume was nevertheless reproduced in the 
second and in the third, as the only reminder of the given promise ! 
I have introduced this digression as indispensable to my “ Characterization of 
Loew,” etc. Without it, many a dipterologist would perhaps have made use of 
the “ Beschreibungen ” before having read its Preface, and therefore without 
understanding the origin and the meaning of the double title of this publication. 
Loew possessed a superabundance of working power and of te¬ 
nacity at work. It is for the purpose of exemplifying these quali¬ 
ties that I have reproduced m facsimile his tour de force in 
calligraphy (in Chapter I), which represents, I may say, an almost 
superhuman effort. In dipterology, after trying different direc¬ 
tions for his studies, he settled upon the descriptive department as 
the most suitable for his insatiable craving for work. If he had 
lived ten years longer, he would probably have continued publish¬ 
ing “ Centuries ” and volumes of “ Beschreibungen europaischer 
Dipteren ” as the most expedient form of publication for his talent. 
It is strange, nevertheless, that he never came openly to acknowl¬ 
edge this vocation, but always attempted to explain it away by 
apologies and equivocations of every kind. 
Heretofore I have examined Loew’s work objectively, from the 
purely critical point of view, and have shown in what his true 
merit consists. But I feel bound, before concluding my “ Charac- 
