—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 synonymy. Palzeontologists 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 disyecfa, 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 the author 
will then add eighty-three more mihis to his already plethoric list of 
North American ‘‘species.” Mr. Léveillé, ata recent séance 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- 
lection 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 Zachimid@ 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 by a very big O!! 
New Haven, May 25, 1889. S. W. WIL tIsTon. 
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. Ifa 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 ! 
