10 THE EARLY STAGES OF TABANID^ 



tionably a reaction on Europe from America. In America research on 

 the early stages of Tabanidae begins with Walsh (1863), who belongs 

 entirely to the old type of naturalist like Westwood and others, de- 

 scribing facts of nature half as pioneers of discovery in strange coun- 

 tries, half as pioneers of rehgion, and filled with a deep admiration of 

 the wisdom manifesting itself in creation. He is contemporary with 

 Osten Sacken, the first systematic specialist of American dipterology, 

 who published his Prodromus to a monograph of North American 

 Tabanidag. In Walsh's publication of previous work only Degeer 

 is referred to, and Walsh believes that his larva, which was proved 

 later to be that of Tabanus atratus, was the first instance of an aquatic 

 tabanid larva. In fact, though the observations of Wahlberg, Zetter- 

 stedt, Scholtz, and Kollar were not known to Walsh, these authors 

 give only indications but no full evidence of aquatic habits of life of 

 the larvag observed by them. While a member of the Boston Nat- 

 ural History Society, Walsh lived for some time in Illinois, where 

 tabanids were numerous and annoying, so that the economic side of 

 the subject inevitably received attention. We may say that with him 

 begins the American or economic school of investigations on this 

 subject. How curiously the economic considerations were mixed 

 with a profound confidence in the wisdom of nature may be seen from 

 the following quotation from his paper, with which few modern in- 

 vestigators will be found to agree, except perhaps the last sentence: 



"The scheme of the creation is perfect, and nature is never at fault. It is 

 only when nature's system is but half understood that we heedlessly complain 

 of its imperfections. We blame the house-flies for annoying us, and fail to see 

 that in the larva state they have cleared away impurities around our dwellings, 

 which might otherwise have bred cholera or typhus fever. We execrate the 

 blood-thirsty mosquito, and forget that in the larva state she has purified the 

 water, which would otherwise, by its malarial efHuvia, have generated agues and 

 fevers. In all probability, when we rail at the Tabani, which torment our horses 

 in the summer, we are railing at insects which, in the larva state, have added 

 millions of dollars to the national wealth, by preying upon those most insidious 

 and unmanageable of all the insect foes of the farmer — subterraneous root-feed- 

 ing larvae." 



The larva of Tabanus atratus is redescribed by C. V. Riley in 1870 

 in the second of his Missouri Reports, this being the first publication 



