PHILIPP C. ZELLER AS A DIPTEROLOGIST 
141 
and journeys (for instance, in 1843, from Sicily). Loew often re¬ 
ferred to him in his letters to me. In one of them (December 16,1860) 
he says: “ Zeller’s companionship last autumn has renewed my in¬ 
terest in practical entomology; I brought home all kinds of stuff, 
which has at once produced some remarkable specimens. Nothing 
is more remunerative than to heap up in a cold room decayed wood, 
dry stems of plants, heads of Composites. Towards the spring, 
without any further trouble, the walls and windows of the room 
are covered with a multitude of flies, some of which are hardly ever 
found in the open air.” In another letter (May 25, 1861) Loew 
says: “ A great comfort for me in the bad weather and other 
miseries we are enduring at present is the intercourse with Zeller, 
who is far superior to me in entomological knowledge and from 
whom I learn a great deal. lie is an able and sympathetic being,” 
etc. Whether Loew was always just towards Zeller is another 
question. Zeller (1840) had been the predecessor of Loew in 
monographing the German Tabanidae , and his work, although 
limited to Silesia as to area, is excellent. Loew in his publication 
on the same subject (in 1858) treats Zeller’s paper with his usual 
superciliousness; he adopts two of his new species of Tabanus, but 
takes no other notice of his work, except in the following off-hand 
passage: “ Zeller, in O ken’s Isis, 1842, has proposed the generic 
separation of the species of Tabanus with strongly pubescent eyes, 
under the name of Therioplectes; the acceptance of this proposition 
would indeed render the determination of the species easier, if the 
eyes of the glabrous-eyed species are absolutely glabrous, and not 
merely provided with a more or less sparse pubescence.” Now I 
have shown (in my “Prodromus of the Tabanidae of the United 
States,” Part I, 1875, p. 425; 43, 1875) that, with a slight modifica¬ 
tion of the definition of Therioplectes, it becomes an excellent gen¬ 
eric concept, and especially acceptable in such a large genus as 
Tabanus. 
In my paper, “ Bibliographical and, in part, psychological In¬ 
quiry on the two Editions of the earliest Publication of H. Loew” 
(. Berl. JEnt. Ze.it., 1896, p. 279-284; 153, 1896), I have shown that 
the publication of the second edition (which appeared in Isis, 
1840) was evidently prompted by no other motive than the emula- 
