58 Records of the Indian Museum. [Vol. IV, 1910.] 



Tahanus with 912, a genus in which over and over again abortive 

 attempts have been made to dismember it successful!}'. 



The real cause of the undue inflation into genera of what 

 should be merely groups of species, and the elevation of a few of 

 such so-called genera into sub-family rank is the general absence of 

 knowledge of the other families in Diptera in the present-da}- writers 

 on Culicidae. Williston has already been quoted on this subject. 



Therefore, in his remark that ' ' triviality has reached its limits ' ' 

 (referring to the slender characters on which so many genera have in 

 recent years been established), I cannot but entirely concur: this 

 without any individual reproach to workers in mosquitoes, many 

 of whom have been most courteous to me personally. 



It is almost certain that a wider knowledge of the accepted 

 zoological value of such terms as "family," "sub-family," 

 " genus," etc., would convince them of the grossly exaggerated 

 value attributed by them to what the systematic dipterologist 

 would term quite secondary characters. 



In short, if any culicidologist would have the patience, before 

 making new genera and sub-families, to read up some of the syste- 

 matic dipterological literature of the last 60 or 80 years, more 

 especially the tables of genera in the various families of Diptera, 

 contained in Schiner's Fauna Austriaca (than which no better 

 standard work on the order has ever been issued) ^ he w^ould find the 

 greatest varieties of forms, not only in antennse, palpi, genital organs, 

 exterior covering (whether scales, hairs, bristles, spines or other- 

 wise), proportionate parts of the body and so on, but in venation 

 also; all this in the same family, 3'et in spite of the hundreds of 

 new species erected yearly, all attempts to create new families and 

 sub-families on slender characters meet with strenuous opposition. 



It may be remarked here, although the subject will be treated 

 more fully in the forthcoming Supplement to my Catalogue, that 

 recent writers on this family appear to depart deliberatel}' from 

 biological precedence in the methods of presenting the results of 

 their studies to others, with the result that the consultation of their 

 writings is unnecessarily rendered materially more difficult. This 

 is chiefly in their method of quoting from other authors; in the 

 indices, and the undue prominence given to the 5 . 



In the present paper however the only object has been to call 

 attention to the instability of the great bulk of the generic and 

 higher divisions recently proposed in this family. 



1 The examination of these tables alone forms, perhaps, the most compre* 

 hensive yet concise method of obtaining a rapid insight into the principles of 

 classification in this order. They may be with advantage supplemented by the 

 equivalent tables relating to North American genera, contained in Prof. Williston's 

 admirable manual " North American Diptera," 2nd Ed. 



