150 
CAMILLO RONDANI AND HIS RELATIONS WITH LOEW 
domyia , Psychoda , Phlebotomus , Anarete, etc.), there are passages 
which greatly need emendation, and in which Rondani’s critic be¬ 
trays a very superficial knowledge of the subjects in question, and 
adopts very hasty conclusions (compare, for instance, the passages 
in the Stett. Put. Zeit ., 1844, p. 118, and p. 121-122; also in the 
“ Dipterologische Beitrage,” Vol. I, p. 10-11, 1845). These pas¬ 
sages, the publication of which Loew must have afterwards regretted, 
made him, at a later period of his career, very prudent in the pro¬ 
posal of innovations in the system (compare the passage in 
“Die Dipteren-Fauna Siidafrika’s,” Preface, p. v, 1860). Con¬ 
cerning the behavior of Loew in regard to other portions of Ron¬ 
dani’s work on Cecidomyiae , I prefer not to say anything, as there 
are other dipterologists, more competent than I, to pass judgment 
upon them. 
In 1858, Loew published a severe, but this time better justified, 
critique of Rondani’s “ Dipterologiae Italicae prodromus,” Vol. I 
(1856), in the Perl. Put. Zeit., 1858, p. 338-840. 
The first volume of the “ Prodromus ” contains dichotomic tables 
of the families and genera of Italian Diptera, published in advance 
of the intended work upon them. The number of genera (accord¬ 
ing to Loew’s statement, loc. cit., p. 338) is 587 ; among them a con¬ 
siderable number are new ones, the names of which are introduced 
without any other description but that contained in the data of the 
dichotomic tables, connected with the name of the typical, often as 
yet undescribed, species. Loew was right in calling this premature 
publication a failure, 1 calculated to impede, rather than to advance, 
the future progress of dipterology. Loew enumerates a large 
number of errors, misspelling of names and misprints. In my 
“Studies on Tipulidae,” Part. II, p. 230, I gave a critical review of 
Rondani’s treatment of this family in the “ Prodromus.” 
To judge of the contents of the other volumes of the “Prodro¬ 
mus ” is a task beyond my power and foreign to the subject of the 
present chapter, to which I now return. 
1 In making this reproach to Rondani in 1858, Loew seems to forget that, only a 
few years before, in 1850, he had published a similar premature dichotomic table of 
the new genera of Amber Diptera, without sufficient definitions. In my Chapter IX 
I have reproduced the very weak apologies he offered for that table. 
