1914-] E. Brunetti : Review of Genera in Culicidae. 29 



I protest emphatically against Major Christophers' statement 

 that •' it seems absurd to term the longitudinals by numbers and 

 the much less important cross veins by a hybrid nomenclature only 

 partially descripti\ e. The omission of the radio-sector cross vein,' 

 which is every bit as important as the others, is also absurd." 



Now firstly, the numbering of the longitudinal veins is correct, 

 concise and easy to remember ; and secondly the writer shews a 

 strange ignorance of the comparative value of the veins in diptera 

 when he asserts that the cross veins are " much less important " 

 than the longitudinals, as exactly the reverse is really the case. The 

 anterior and posterior cross veins are of infinitelv more importance 

 taxonomically than the branching of the longitudinal veins, as is 

 shewn by the absolute fixity in most families of diptera of them 

 both, and especially the former, which any dipterologist of exper- 

 ience can locate with absolute precision in almost every instance. 



His discovery that the " radio sector cross vein " is " every 

 bit as important as the others " is stultified by the absolute fact 

 that there is no cross vein there at all. Some authors would 

 construe as a cross vein every vein that starts at anything ap- 

 proaching a right angle. 



It seems strange that every fresh writer on mosquitoes must 

 introduce new terms for veins and cells, apparently oblivious of 

 the fact that for at least half a century the venation in diptera 

 has been thoroughly understood by dipterologists and two standard 

 systems of terminology accepted, either of which is legitimate, the 

 one employed by the late Mr. G. H. Verrall in his wonderfully 

 accurate and explicit volumes on the British Diptera, the other as 

 used by the late Baron Osten Sacken and by most of the principal 

 dipterologists of today. These two authors were perhaps un- 

 equalled in their elaborate knowledge of the classificAtion of the 

 diptera, of the taxonomic value of the difi^erent characters dominat- 

 ing each group and in their precise and correct terminology. 



Finally it is beyond the present writer's comprehension wh)^ 

 recent workers on mosquitoes have from the first so studiously 

 i?^nored both of the two accepted systems of venation used by 

 dipterologists for over half a century and which are morphologi- 

 cally unassailable. 



To sum up, the venation in the Culicidae as a family, diptero- 

 logically speaking, is throughout remarkably uniform, and is toler- 

 ably constant, generically and specifically within reasonable 

 limits ; the only points of variation being the positions, relatively 

 or absolutely, of the cross veins in Mucidus and Megarhinus, the 

 shortened , fork cells in the latter and in Uranotaenia, and the 

 alleged 7th vein in Heptaphlebomyia, all of which I have endeav- 

 oured to dispose of satisfactorily. 



I By which is meant the actual, often angulated base of the 2nd longitudinal 

 vein. James and Listen also erroneously regard this basal section as a cross vein, 

 the " marginal transverse vein." One or two others have made the same deplor- 

 able error 



