Cüiitributiuns tu tbc Study of thc Liponeuridae Lvv. 149 



I. The Name of the Family. 



Rondani (Prodr. I, 1856) introduced this family under thc iiaiiic 

 Asthenidae (p. 17, Astenidae, p. 39, and stirps Astenina, p. 190), 

 without any definition. The genus Macropeza was included in it, 

 perhaps in accordance with Loew, 1844, p. 121, line 18, ^Yho ex- 

 pressed the same view. The generic nanie Asthenia Westw. having 

 been given up as preoccupied, Loew introduced for the family the 

 name Blepharoceridae (Monogr. N.A. Dipt. Vol. I, 1862, p. 8). 

 He had no other choice for the name, because the genus Blepharicera 

 Macq. (or Blepharocera, as Loew amended it) was in 1862 the 

 only published genus in the family. Liponeura Loew (1844), was, 

 at that time, considered by Loew as a synonym of Blepharocera. 

 And the genus Tam/rhinu, from Ceylon, which he mentions at the 

 same time with Blepharocera, was meroly a name without description. 

 The name being preoccupied {Tany rhmus Mannerh-), the genus was 

 described by Loew for the first time in 1869 (Bullet. Soc. E. It.) as 

 Hammatorrlüna. It is in the interval between 18G'2 and 1869 that 

 Loew disentangled the two gcncra Blepharocera and Liponeura^ 

 as far as Macquart was concerned; Schiner's Blepharicera (1864) 

 was interpreted by Loew only in 1877, and, as wo shall see (in§V), 

 unsuccessfully. In 1877 (p. 58) Loew referred to bis publication in 

 1862, and intimated that he should have proferrcd to have given to 

 the family the niore appropriate name of Liponeura, but that it 

 appeared to him unbecoming („es schien mir anmassend") to bestow 

 upon it a name derived from one of his own genera. I do not attempt 

 to explain the evident disagreement between the two Statements, that 

 of 1862, where Loew says: „I unite these two genera (Bleph. and 

 Tanyrrh.) into one family etc." and that of 1877 where he says 

 (p. 58, line 16) „at that time (1862), when I knew only three genera 

 etc.", cowxiWüg Liponevra for one. Thore is not the slightest doubt, 

 at any rate, that if Loew had been aware in 1862 of the difterence 

 between his Liponeura and Macquart's Blepharocera, no sense 

 of the unbecoming would have prevented him to introducc the more 

 appropriate name. He is perfectly right in saying „that it was much 

 against his inclination (es widerstrebte mir die Wahl nicht wenig) to 

 give a name which means ciliated antennae to a family distinguished 

 from all the surrounding ones by the glabrousness of its antennae". 

 He goes on to say that Uponeuridae (which means „losing its 

 veins") is a much better name for a family with such a variable vena- 

 tion. In his perj^lexity he suggests the rather desperate remedy 

 of altering the names of genus and family in Ahlepharocera and 

 Ablepharoceridae, in order to prescrve in these names a trace 



