REVIEWS. 58 



of the curious dialects that certain naturalists, on either side of the Alps, 

 have muffled in the folds of the toga. Erichson has given a recipe for such 

 cases when, criticising a compatriot, he goes on to say " Our western neigh- 

 bours, also, in their natural history works, favour us pretty often with a Latin 

 which can only be deciphered through the medium of a literal retranslation 

 into the vernacular idiom of the writers." The closer affinity of the Runic 

 idioms to the English may render us less sensitive to isms from this source 

 than we are to the German, French, or Italian dialects of Latin. Certainly 

 we have found no occasion for a Latin-Swedish dictionary, in order to under- 

 stand Zetterstedt's descriptions. We must demur, however, when he calls in 

 question subsultans of Linnseus, or borrows such a superfluous barbarism 

 as anciennetas, foreign alike to the vocabulary of the great master, and of 

 his classical models. But these are the rare and pardonable slips of a style 

 sufficiently correct in general. To us the least satisfactory portion of 

 Zetterstedt's work is the composition and arrangement of the families. 

 Commencing with Tabanus, the series of the Brachycera is made to end in 

 Phora, followed by the Coriacece, which again the Nemocera succeed. 

 Here the interposition of Phora and the Coriacece excludes all thoughts 

 of a natural transition between the two great sections of the order. The 

 system of the Diptera Scandinavia is avowedly an artificial one; but 

 viewed simply as such, seems not to fulfil the end so well as to com- 

 pensate for the disregard of natural affinities. Zetterstedt, in grateful 

 deference to the authority of his illustrious master in Entomology, has re- 

 tained the arrangement and names of Fallen's older system to a great ex- 

 tent, when, perhaps, his unbiassed judgment might have accorded better 

 with the more recent systems of Meigen or Macquart. But in the Nemo- 

 cera also, where he had not that precedent to constrain him, and his classi- 

 fication is more original, some of the families appear as far from natural 

 groups. Perhaps the most signal instance is that which Schaum has 

 already singled out the Ryphii, in which Rhyphus, the typical genus, 

 possessing three equal and equidistant ocelii, an ambient vein, and normal 

 system of venation, stands associated with Ceroplatus and Cordyla, two 

 genera transferred from the Mycetophilinte, a family whose characters are 

 nearly the opposite of those ; while the larvae of the two are no less diffe- 

 rent, that of Rliyphus being amphipneustic,* those of the Mycetophilina 

 peripneustic.f Another genus, Pachyncura, having three ocelli, and want- 

 ing the suture of the mesonotum that is characteristic of the Tipulides, with 

 which it is ranked by Zetterstedt, should probably also be referred to the 



* With anterior and posterior spiracles only. f With intermediate spiracles also. 



