6 THOMAS SAY FOUNDATION 



factory basis than that of any other Muscoid group. 

 Bottcher in particular has given a beautiful con- 

 densed synopsis of the European species, with dia- 

 grams of the male genitalia; he made out about 80 

 species and varieties. Through his efforts and those 

 of Villeneuve and Kramer, most of the old collections 

 have been re-examined and the types of the early 

 descrij)tions elucidated.* 



In the United States since the beginning of any 

 indigenous dipterology about 1880 there has been a 

 virtual blockade in this group, due to the vast num- 

 ber of unrecognizable old descriptions, of which the 

 types were scattered in European museums or lost. 

 On account of this condition, Williston and Coquil- 

 lett described new species only under some special 

 stress of circmnstances. Dr. Hough, with character- 

 istic energy, gathered up all the available material in 

 collections, added to it largely himself, and projected 

 a revision ; but before he had made much progress, in 

 1903, he decided that his medical practice required his 

 undivided attention. So he sold his collection, includ- 

 ing the Sarcophagidffi, to the University of Chicago. 

 Van der Wulp had in the meantime added a list of 

 Mexican and Central American forms. The writer's 

 Catalogue of North American Diptera, published in 

 1905, shows 106 nominal species of Sarcophaga from 

 North America, of which it is safe to say that hardly 

 more than half a dozen were ever recognizably de- 

 scribed. In the absence of any clear understanding 

 of the specific characters, this looked like the most 

 hopeless field imaginable. 



The first American worker to attack the group 

 by the new genitalic method was Dr. Ralph R. Par- 

 ker; he began in the winter of 1912-13 a study of the 

 New England representatives. His first paperf con- 

 tains a thorough and admirable discussion of the 



♦References for this paragraph: 



Pandelle, Revue entomologiqiie, xr. 173-207, 1897. 



Boettcher. Deutsche ent. Zeitschrift, 1912, 525-544 and 705-736; and 

 1913, 1-16, 115-130, 239-254, .351-377. 

 tProceedings Boston Sec. Nat. Hist., 35. 1-77, 8 plates, 1914. 



