152 
CAMILLO RONDANI AND HIS RELATIONS WITH LOEW 
excursion to Italy, in order to anticipate the advent of spring. As 
there is not the slightest prospect of it, I intend, if feasible, to send 
Ivowarz on a collecting tour to Italy, as the more intimate knowl¬ 
edge of the Italian fauna of Diptera is indispensable to me. It may 
be expedient to arrange it so that this excursion should include a 
visit to Parma, and procure me, in that way, as much light as pos¬ 
sible on Rondani’s nomenclature of the species. Could you give 
me some advice about the best time for undertaking such a journey, 
and some indications concerning the best localities,” etc. This great 
desire for more information upon the Italian fauna stands in strange 
contrast with the marked repugnance that Loew always showed 
against any correspondence with Rondani. Loew wrote me this 
while he was keeping me for years in suspense about the manu¬ 
script of the third volume of the “ Monographs.” I must have 
felt rather tired of such proceedings, because I do not find in my 
correspondence that I made any reply to this Italian ‘proposal. 
During the spring of 1873, Loew asked me to procure him in 
Italy the volumes of Rondani’s “Prodromus,” as, up to that time, 
he had used a borrowed copy. I sent him the work as a present, 
and received his thanks (May 9, 1873). I take note of the follow¬ 
ing passage: “ This work, with all its imperfections, is not without 
some positive merit (‘ist nicht ohne bestimmte Vorzuge’), which 
makes it indispensable, so that I am glad to have it.” This rather 
late acquisition must have offered Loew an opportunity for a more 
serious study of the “ Prodromus.” I find that the very next year, 
in his paper on Azelia (1874, p. 9), he pays a compliment to Rondani 
on his progress between Yol. I and Vol. VI of the “ Prodromus.” 
In Vol. I Rondani had united Azelia and Homalomyia under the 
name of Myantlia, gen. n. In Vol. VI he gave up Myantha , and 
restored the other two genera. Loew says : “ He has characterized 
them by plastic characters that are better chosen than those pre¬ 
viously used by authors in defining the genera of Anthomyiidae, so 
that his work on this family, in this instance and in others, consti¬ 
tutes a true progress in its classiiication. The characterization of 
Azelia by Rondani is, on the whole, sufficient, although not quite ap¬ 
plicable to female specimens. The characters used in the definition 
of the five species enumerated by him are useful (‘ brauchbar ’), 
