3Iidas or Mi/das? 347 



S. ä B., Dipt. I, p. 273 (1834): „le nom de Mydas fait allusion ä la 

 loiigueur des antennes". Dr. G. does not seeni to have noticcd this 

 l)assage. Dufour and Bellardi accepted the spelling of Macquart 

 cvidcntly froni inadvertcnce, and not on any principle. 



Wiedeinann, in his description of the first Mydas in Mci- 

 gen's Syst. Beschr. II, p. 130 (1820) writes Mydas, but in the 

 Prcface of his Monograph, p. 24 (1829) he has the foUowing passage: 

 „Potius ad Mi das revertainur, et primo quidem ad Ortographiam, 

 vel potius quae Fabricio placuit Cacographiam noininis gentilis 

 Mydas, qui lapsus calami fuisse videtur. Nam etiamsi hoc mirum 

 videri possit, quod erroreni Entom. Systematicae in Systemate Ant- 

 liatoruni repetitum videmus, tarnen frustra aliani hujus nominis deri- 

 vationem quaesivimus, neque dubitari potest ([uin Regis Midae spa- 

 tiosae aures, quibus porrectiores hujus generis Dipterorum antennae 

 satis apte coniparari possunt, huic nonien suum dederint, idque eo 

 nieliore jure, quo Physicis nonnullis auditus sensum in antennis sedeni 

 suam habere placuit. Quam ob rem nomen illud in posterum sit 

 masculini et literam y cum litera i commutet!" 



On p. 32 of the same work Wiedemann says: „In Dictionario 

 scienc. nat. Tom. XXXI, 1824, p. 47 Dumeril si minus in ceteris, 

 tarnen in iis, quae ad Orthographiam attinent, de Midis mcritus est, 

 nisi quod in eo erravit quod Latreillium primum hoc nomen generi 

 alicui insectorum imposuisse dicit. Tom. XXXIV, 1825, p. 1 eadem 

 repetuntur sub voce Mydas pro])ter Orthographiam." I liave found 

 that Dumeril in a still earlier volume of same Dictionary (which 

 is commonly called Deterville's Dict. d'Hist. Nat. GO voll. 181G-30) 

 under the word Diptera (Vol. XIII, 1819) has Mydas, and it was 

 later only that he followed Latreille's Precis (1796) where he 

 found Mi das. Wiedemann did not compare the Precis, and, 

 for this reason, his criticism of Dumeril abont the latter's reference 

 to Latreille was unfounded. 



Westwood had Mydas in the Transactions etc. (1835) and in 

 the Introduction etc. (1840), but in his Monograph of the Mydaidae 

 (Arcana p. 49, 1841) he adopted the view of Wiedemann and 

 spelled Mi das ever since. It is stränge that Dr. Gerstaecker 

 who must have often consulted Westwood's Monograph, does not 

 seem to have noticed this change. 



Seh in er adopted Mi das as a matter of course. 



It is evident from this survey, that, in the inajority of cases in 

 which Mydas was adopted, it was from inadvertcnce only, and that, 

 upon reflection, Midas was considcred as the more correct spelling. 

 Latreille is the only one who followed the opposite course, spelling 



