CAMILLO RONDANI AND HIS RELATIONS WITH LOEW 
147 
left “ a mine of characters ” untouched (as I have expressed in my 
paper on “ Chaetotaxy,” in the Trans. Ent. Sac., London, 1884, 
p. 515; 102, 1884). 
Rob.-Desvoidy had carefully defined and named the parts 
of the head, but his terminology of the bristles was vague (cilia 
frontalia for the bristles of the upper part of the head; cilia 
apicalia for the bristles of the abdomen). He used these terms 
in his last work (1863) ; in the “ Myodaires ” (1830) the description 
of the bristles is still more uncertain. Compare for instance the 
description of the genus Athrycia in the “ Myodaires ” (p. Ill) with 
that of the same genus in the “Hist. Nat.,” etc., Vol. I, p. 829 
(1863). 
I do not find that the term macrochaetae has been used by 
Macquart, Loew, Haliday, or Walker, and, so far as I can find 
out, it was Schiner, in his “ Fauna,” who popularized it for the first 
time. But it is nevertheless strange that, although llondani made 
the first step towards a systematic Chaetotaxy, lie did not persist 
in this undertaking, which would have been of much use to him in 
his later publications. 
Apart from Chaetotaxy; Rob.-Desvoidy and Rondani had, in gen¬ 
eral, given more attention to the preliminary work indispensable 
for the proper classification and description of Diptera than Loew. 
It is unnecessary for me to insist upon this again, after the account 
I have given, in my “ Chapters ” concerning Loew, of the striking 
contrast between the magniloquent Preface of Loew’s second 
edition of his “ Posener Dipteren ” (1840) and his complete failure 
in realizing the expectations raised by it; or of Loew’s terror, 
when he was requested by the Smithsonian Institution to prepare a 
General Introduction on Diptera, to precede the intended series of 
“ Monographs ” (compare above in my Chapter VII: Remarks . . . 
concerning Loew’s first volume of the Monographs of North Amer¬ 
ican Diptera). 
Among a lot of pamphlets (derived from Loew’s library) which 
I purchased at a bookseller’s in Leipzig, I found three manuscript 
letters of Rondani to Loew. The earliest of them is dated Feb¬ 
ruary 15, 1846, and begins with the words: “ Literas tuas carissi- 
mas die 25 Januarii 1845 inscriptas, initio tantuin mensis Februari 
