— 141 — 



recognizable from descriptions, so much so that hardly any one ever 

 takes the troubte to determine them at all, yet I would very respectfully 

 submit that a few words more, or at least some vague intimation that 

 other species of the family had been previously described, might throw 

 some light upon their s}-nonyniy. Palaeontologists may properly erect 

 a new species on a fossil foot, but when the entomologist attempts the 

 same with a fly's foot, or other membra disjecta^ one can only ask that 

 the author give, at least, a good description of the claws. 



It is probable that the above mentioned Latin diagnoses will be 

 followed sometime in the future by French translations, and ihe author 

 will then add eighty-three more mihis to his already plethoric list of 

 North Aiperican "species." ]Mr. Leveille, at a recent seance of the 

 Society, proposed that it should form a collection of types, especially 

 of the insects described in the Annales. I can assure him that a col- 

 lectiun of such types as the above mentioned flies will be in great 

 demand — for the determination of synonyms, or for purposes of de- 

 scription. The TachinidcB are such an attractive family of insects that 

 it shows much prudence in publishing diagnoses, and thus saving the 

 mihis. The half dozen active dipterologists of the world are probably 

 all looking with envious eyes at the author's good-fortune. 



But the subject takes one's breath away ; it can only be character- 

 ized b}- a ver\- big O ! ! 



New Haven, May 25, 188 g. S. W. Williston. 



NOTE BY EDITOR. 



Dr. Williston speaks feelingly and we sympathize with him. We 

 have been in precisely the same frame of mind, and can testify that 

 nothing is so certain to make a man unutterably weary and to force him 

 to the conviction that after all marriage is a failure, as the receipt of a 

 paper containing a lot of "new species," just about the time when one 

 begins to feel that light is ahead and the weary work of making the ac- 

 quaintance of adamized species at an end. If a paper be really good, 

 this feeling does not exist. We refer only to the variety (it may be a 

 species) which seems to have aroused Dr. Williston's ire, where you can 

 read the "diagnoses" forward, backward and from the middle, without 

 being at all clear whether after all the characters given apply to twenty, 

 or only to fifteen species. The matter ought really to be brought to the 

 attention of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or some similar 

 society, for I am quite certain that a more vicious condition of mind 

 could not possibly be aroused even by an undraped cigarette picture 

 than by such a publication as mentioned by Dr. Williston ! 



