X'ov.. 'oo] F.XTO. \ior.or,ic.\L XEWS 



Regarding Mr. Verrall's Criticism of my "Glossary 



of Chaetotaxy." 



BY W. R. \YALTOX, Harrisburg, Pa. 



First allow me to acknowledge my great indebtedness to 

 Mr. Yerrall for his very complete criticism of my paper. It 

 is of special value at this time in view of the fact that the 

 paper is about to he reprinted as part of a bulletin of the 

 Division of Economic Zoology of the State of Pennsylvania, 

 through the kindness of Prof. II. A. Surface. 



Then I wish to assure him of my hearty endorsement of one 

 of his closing remarks, to wit: "the Glossary should be re- 

 vised and considerably developed before it can be 

 accepted as a standard." 



I certainly never expected the work to be "accepted as a 

 standard," but offered it simply as a help to those, who 

 like myself, have had difficulty in grasping the chaetotactic 

 characters unaided by sufficient illustrations. 



Dean Swift's saying that "fools rush in where angels fear 

 to tread" just about expresses my position in the matter, 

 but if my poor paper has but the effect of stimulating some 

 such able dipterologist as my distinguished critic seems to 

 be, through any motive whatsoever, toward producing a more 

 complete, accurate, better illustrated work, I shall feel that 

 my effort has not been in vain. 



I regret exceedingly that it is my misfortune never to have 

 seen a copy of his "British Flies" and if any work of his 

 contains terms which should have been included in my paper. 

 I sincerely hope he will pardon the oversight as being unin- 

 tentional. 



As chaetotaxy reaches its highest state of usefulness as ap- 

 plied to the Muscoidean flies my critic is quite right in sup- 

 posing that the paper seems to have been compiled for the 

 use of Tachinologists. However, I realize now that the title 

 of the paper is entirely too pretentious. It should have been 

 more brief and to the point. The writer regrets exceedingly 

 that he has no direct knowledge of the Herman literature re- 



