Synonym ica about Tipulidae. 261 



(Brit, Ent. plate 50, Limnobia ocellaris). It must have been a mere 

 inadvertence of Ins, when, in tlie letterpress appended to the plate, 

 he mentions L. picta and ocellaris (ocellata as he has it, is a Iapsus) 

 as two different species. 



How did it happen that this species, although recognized as the 

 ocellaris Linne by Schrank in 1781. and independently of hini, by 

 Curtis in 1824, has been, in all the modern works, called picta 

 Fab. (1798)? In Schiner's Fauna (II, p. 551—552), the principal 

 hand-book of european dipterology for the last thirty years, the species 

 is called picta P'ab., with ocellaris Curtis (and not Linne) as synonym. 

 And ocellaris Linne is placed, with a query, as a synonym of the 

 totally different Poccilostola punctata Meig. 



The fault in this case was with Fabricius, who has reproduced 

 Linne's short diagnosis of Tip. ocellaris, with the references, in all 

 his works successively, without apparently knowing anything about 

 it, just as he had done with Tip. annulata Lin. (comp. § 3 of the 

 present paper). It was in 1798 that he finally received specimens 

 of ocellaris Linne, but did not recognize them as such, and published 

 them in the Supplement to his Entom. Syst. IV as Tip. picta n. sp. 

 Meigen, who published his „Klassification" (1804) soon afterwards, 

 recognized Fabricius's picta, which he had found in his own lo- 

 cality, and redescribed it (1. c. p. 60) with a reference to Fabricius, 

 as picta with the addition: „it is found in summer on meadows and 

 along ditches, but not very ofteu". In the same work (p. 74), among 

 the species unknown to bim, he has Tip. ocellaris, with references 

 to Fabricius, Gmelin and Schrank, and with the remark: „must 

 be very like picta". That they were identical does not seem to havc 

 occurred to him. Later, he has had the opportunity of examining 

 Fabricius's types. In his Syst, Beschr. I, p. 152 (1818) he says 

 about ocellaris Lin.: „Fabricius retained Linne's diagnosis" (he 

 means the mention of ocellate spots) „nevertheless in his collection it 

 is the Limnobia punctata which bears the label ocellaris; Schrank's 

 Tipida ocellaris Lin. (Ins. Austr. 856) is doubtful, but probably 

 Limnobia picta". If Meigen had examined and compared critically 

 Linne's and Fabricius's Statements about ocellaris, he would have 

 easily discovered that Fabricius never recognized ocellaris Lin., 

 that, in fact, ocellaris Fab., as a scientific concept, had no existence, 

 and that Fabricius's picta was the very same ocellaris, which 

 Schrank had recognized long ago. Meigen should have paid no 

 attention to the pretended type in Fabricius collection. mislabelled 

 ocellaris, and representing punctata which has nothing in common 

 with Linne's description. That Schiner did not notice this mistake 



