1897. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 225 



The Museum appears to receive a rather miscellaneous lot of objects, 

 but every attempt is made by Messrs. Quick and Slade to reduce 

 them to scientific order, and make them of real use to their particular 

 public, as well as to others in other places. 



A Species-monger on New Zealand Midges. 



Owing to their small size and generally inconspicuous coloration, 

 the Diptera, or two-winged flies, usually escape the notice of the 

 scientific explorer, unless they belong to species that display an 

 unpleasant fondness for his blood. The Diptera of New Zealand 

 have been more neglected than most, and Mr. P. Marshall finds that 

 " the total number now described does not amount to more than a 

 hundred and twenty-fixve species, of which only twenty belong to the 

 Nemocera," — the division including the midges, gnats, and daddy- 

 long-legs. A paper by Mr. Marshall now before us {Trans. New 

 Zealand Institute, 1895 ! PP- 216-31 1, pis. v.-xiv.) is a vigorous attempt 

 to supply the deficiency. The present instalment, which is merely a 

 beginning, deals with the Cecidomyidae (gall-midges), Mycetophilidae 

 (fungus- midges) and Simulidae (sand-flies), and includes descriptions 

 of 62 species, 57 of which, belonging to the two former families, are 

 introduced as new. Alas ! not only are 23 of these new species 

 described from single specimens, but many of these are females. " I 

 have only one specimen of this insect" is a statement of irritating 

 frequency, accompanied in more than one case by the information that 

 the type is " rather imperfect." Nor is this all. For the fungus- 

 midges the author finds himself constrained to make ten new genera ; 

 and of the names chosen for these, seven are already in use, in one 

 instance in the very order which he has undertaken to study, and with 

 a representative in New Zealand. 



Those who know anything of Diptera will understand the 

 enormity of describing a fungus-midge from a single female specimen ; 

 those who do not may be told that these little flies are but a few 

 millimetres in length (the author, for some inscrutable reason, gives 

 his measurements in decimals of an inch), that they are among the 

 most delicate and fragile of their order, and that their sexual 

 differences are often considerable. How many of these precious types 

 will be available for comparison fifty years hence ? But the author 

 has evidently no idea of the importance and sanctity which is 

 nowadays attached to a type-specimen. Of one insect, for which he 

 makes a new species and a new genus (with a pre-occupied name), he 

 writes: " Mr. Hudson has kindly lent me a specimen for drawing up 

 this description." 



Only two years before the date of his paper did Mr. Marshall 

 begin to collect Diptera. He had meant to send them to England to 

 have them named, but Captain Hutton advised him to work them out 



