HISTORY OF INVESTIGATIONS. 



In 1760 the Swedish naturalist Degeer published a paper, in the 

 transactions of the Swedish Academy of Science, on the larval and 

 pupal stages of the European horse-fly, Tabamis bovinus, which he 

 found to be terrestrial in habit, and which he described in a paper 

 bearing the title Bromsarnas ursprung (The origin of horse-flies). 

 Degeer was a contemporary and compatriot of Fabricius, the first 

 great entomologist, and both continued the work of Linne. It is 

 stated by various authors that Fabricius' works also contain data on 

 the early stages of Tabanida3, though very few, but I have not been 

 able to find such data in the Systema Entoinologice (1775) or in the 

 Entomologia Systematica. The statement that the larvas of Chrysops 

 are found in the ground cannot have been made by Fabricius, in this 

 form, as the genus Chrysops was first established by Meigen (1803). 

 If Zetterstedt makes this statement in Diptera Scandinavice, it is pos- 

 sible that it is from verbal information or from some later writings of 

 Fabricius. Zetterstedt seems to doubt it, stating that he has seen 

 large numbers of newly emerged Chrysops near the margin of a lake, 

 which would indicate an aquatic habitat. The Swedish school for a 

 considerable time dominated entomological work in all countries 

 Degeer's observations are reprinted in his Memoires pour servir a 

 Vhistoire des insectes, which appeared in French in 1776 and also in 

 German translation (Goeze, 1882). These observations are given 

 without change by Macquart in Histoire naturelle des insectes. Dipteres 

 (1834), and by Westwood in England, the illustrator of the Arcana 

 Entomologica, in his paper Introduction to the modern classification of 

 insects (1840). To the same school belongs Wahlberg, who in 1838 

 published, in Swedish, accounts of the larval stages and mode of life 

 of many Diptera, which also contain, according to Brauer, notes on 

 tabanid larvae living inside lepidopterous larvee, probably in a pseudo- 

 parasitic way. In one of his papers on this subject I could not find 

 any reference to Tabanida^. 



The progress of entomology consisted chiefly in a greater specializa- 

 tion as to definite orders which were systematically studied and 



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