OF WASHINGTON". 55 



apparent in all of his acts. On the other hand, at the very bot 

 tom of the list, one would be inclined to place the ubiquitous 

 Robineau-Desvoidy ; while his larger groups show some ap 

 proach to a natural arrangement, his conception of a genus and 

 species and his futile attempts at describing them, are as unsatis 

 factory as they well could be, and it is therefore -not at all sur 

 prising that Rondani (a genius in his way, as is more particu 

 larly evidenced by his masterly treatment of the family Antho- 

 myidae, one of the most obscure and difficult groups in the whole 

 order), after recording the names of several of Desvoidy's sup 

 posed species as synonyms of some well-known form, not infre 

 quently placed a suggestive " etc.'' after the last one, indicating 

 that several more names from the same source could be added ad 

 libitum. 



Wiedemann, who was a contemporary of Say, was the first 

 writer to pollute our nomenclature of the Diptera by changing 

 several of the valid specific names imposed by Say ; sometimes 

 this pollution was simply a matter of one or two letters, at other 

 times the entire name was changed for no other apparent reason 

 than that the new one was more descriptive of the species than 

 was the original. Loew followed Wiedemann in this unfortu 

 nate respect, and, being a more prolific writer, the mischief which 

 he wrought was correspondingly greater. Unfortunately, these 

 polluted names have been given the place of the valid ones in 

 Osten Sacken's otherwise excellent catalogue of our Diptera, and 

 later writers, with few exceptions, have followed the catalogue 

 as a matter of expediency. 



This polluting of the nomenclature comes down to us from the 

 very beginning of our binomial system. It was the custom of 

 Linne, in the subsequent editions of his works, to occasionally 

 change the names which he had previously bestowed upon cer 

 tain species, sometimes simply changing the manner of spelling, 

 but at other times an entirely different name was substituted, and 

 in rare cases the old name was transferred to a totally different 

 species. Considering the fact that he wrote at a time when 

 science was just beginning to free itself from fiction, his actions 

 can perhaps be condoned ; but at the present time there would 

 appear to be no excuse either for polluting the valid names im 

 posed by the original describers or for using such polluted names 



