302 Jiecnrda of the Indian Musevvi. [Vol. XV, 



referred Loew's fossil species to his own genus Elephantomyia having 

 also recognised his supposed canadensis, Westw. to be a different species 

 from Westwood's, and calling it westwoodi, and he retained Toxorhina 

 for fmgilis, including in it his two North American species. Scudder, 

 comparatively recently,^ supports Schiner's view, and Kertesz in his 

 " Katalog " follows Osten Sacken, but Bergroth has reopened the con- 

 troversy and his view appears to be just. 



A continual difficulty in this discussion is that opposite views may be 

 held at almost every stage, leading naturally to exactly opposite final 

 results. According to present day standards Toxorhina was at best 

 but weakly characterised, but it must be remembered that in Loew's 

 time very few Tipulidae with excessively long rostrums were known 

 and it could in those days be easily recognised. 



Secondly, it may certainly be claimed that as he at the erection of 

 the generic name (1850) neither nominated a known species nor de- 

 scribed any one of his three fossil ones the genus was simply a nomen 

 nudum. 



However, in his next paper (1851), though he still gives no purely 

 generic description,- he sufficiently characterises the three fossil species 

 {longirostris, pulchella and brevipalpa), and from these characters those 

 of the genus can be gleaned. In this paper he adds a description of a 

 living species, fragilis. He says nothing about a submarginal cell being 

 present or absent in the fossil species ; he figures the palpus of each 

 fossil sjsecies, the tip of the proboscis of one (longirostris) and also figures 

 fragilis (full insect, wing and other parts). 



Osten Sacken contended that the generic characters apply wholly 

 to fragilis ^ and therefore he retained the name Toxorhina in his mono- 

 graph for it, plus his two American species, and relegated Loew's three 

 fossil species to Elephantomyia, Os. Sac. 



Now the whole tenor of Loew's writings on Toxorhina, convinces me 

 that he intended the name to apply mainly to the three fossil species, 

 firstly because when he set up the genus he mentioned no others but 

 them and secondly because all these are mentioned first in his descriptive 

 paper (1851), fragilis being added in a succeeding paragraph as a new 

 species. Osten Sacken also notes (Monog. p. 113) that Loew, speak- 

 ing at a meeting of German naturalists at Konigsberg, mentioned having 

 discovered a genus which he had called Toxorhina for three fossil species, 

 continuing " afterwards I became acquainted with a living represen- 

 tative of the same genus." From the priority given to the fossil species 

 both in his paper and his speech it is quite evident that Loew in his 

 own mind regarded Toxorhina as definitely established before the discovery 

 of fragilis, that is to say, established for his three fossil species. 



Though Osten Sacken did not see the fossils themselves, he examined 

 drawings of them lent him by Loew, and these drawings shew the pre- 

 sence of a submarginal cell, which cell is absent in fragilis. 



1 Proc. Amer. Philo.i. Soc. XXXII (1894). Roprinted as "Tertiary Tipulidae." 



2 Linn. Entomologicn, V, ]). 400. 



3 " This description applies to T. fnnjili-s only and not to the three fossil species," 

 (Oslcn Sacken.) 



