CRITICISM AND MUSCOID TAXONOMY 115 



CRITICISM AND MUSCOID TAXONOMY » 



By CHARLES H. T. TOWNSEND 



Healthy criticism is always commendable, and even stage-effect criti- 

 cism is occasionally permissible, but no criticism can be allowed to pass 

 unchallenged which tends toward a distortion of the truth. Mr. W. R. 

 Walton's cirticle on " The Variation of Structural Characters used in the 

 Classification of Some Muscoidean Flies " ^ is useful so far as his descrip- 

 tion of identifiable variants goes. The table of I specimens of " Bel- 

 vosia hifasdata" signifies little, inasmuch as the specimens are from 

 diverse sources of parentage. They may all be the same species, and 

 tliey may not. As pointed out in conclusion, breeding of materiaJ from 

 known parents must be carried out and that through severed generations. 

 Nothing short of this will demonstrate the limits of specific variants. Every 

 student of the Muscoidea knows that these flies Vciry within certeiin limits, 

 but recorded variations to be of service must be identified with certainty. 



The series of Enn^omma glohosa T., reared from Chalcodermus aneus 

 by Mr. G. G. Ainslie at Clemson College, South Carolina, was exam- 

 ined by me at the time of rearing. The specimens showed practically 

 no variation of importance. On the contrary I was much struck with 

 their great uniformity, both as regards size and hairiness of the eyes in the 

 male. The species is mentioned as Myiophasia &nea, whereas it is a 

 perfectly distinct form. I consider Enn^omma a valid genus, and am 

 willing to abide by the verdict of the future when generic characters shall 

 have been more thoroughly correlated in these flies. 



What is mistakenly called a new system of nomenclature proposed by 

 me is explained fundcimentally in a forthcoming paper, " A New Appli- 

 cation of Taxonomic Principles." It is no new system, but a new appli- 

 cation of the basic principles of the old system. The species status is 

 discussed in another forthcoming paper, " The Species-status and the 

 Species-concept." These two papers will not only throw light on the 

 subject, but they will bear out the statements quoted from the Taxonomy 

 of the Muscoidean Flies, page I 3. 



The opinion that the erection of a genus on a single specimen is folly 



' This article should have appeared in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society 

 of Washington, and was in fact submitted to that society for the purpose. It was, how- 

 ever, declined, it is printed here in the interest of fair play. — Editor. 



^Proc. Ent. Soc. Washington, vol. xv (1913), pp. 21-28. 



