862 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXin. No. 857 



The publication at this time of these re- 

 marks in their present form has been prompted 

 by the recent appearance of Mr. W. R. Thomp- 

 son's " Synonymical and other Notes on Dip- 

 tera," * which have just reached me and which 

 I am extremely glad in this case to see pub- 

 lished, since they are here serving the useful 

 purpose of calling forth some timely observa- 

 tions that would otherwise have been reserved 

 for the future. It is hardly possible that the 

 S3Tion3rmy indicated in the above-mentioned 

 notes will eventually prove to be final. If so 

 it will indicate the possession on the part of 

 its author of most astute perception and per- 

 fect judgment of external adult characters, 

 such as I myself can not lay claim to after 

 more than twenty years' study of these flies. 

 For the present, it certainly can not be ac- 

 cepted as such. No matter how carefully 

 done or how clear one's perception, final syn- 

 onymy in these groups can not be attained by 

 the mere comparison of external anatomical 

 parts in museum material, types or otherwise. 

 It will henceforth be simply a waste of time, - 

 energy, paper and ink to put forth such re- 

 sults without correlation with the other char- 

 acters mentioned, and I will therefore not dis- 

 cuss here the merits of the points raised in 

 these notes, of most of which I have very 

 serious doubt. But I shall return to these 

 points as soon as I can secure proper material 

 for the necessary dissections. 



If students wish to further the interests and 

 advance the status of muscoid taxonomy, let 

 them collect, rear and dissect long series of 

 specimens from the type localities concerned; 

 they will then be in a position to deduce final 

 synonymical conclusions. Any other course 

 in the present stage of progress of the work 

 will only further obscure the subject. The 

 same ground will all have to be covered again 

 and all raised or unraised points thoroughly 

 probed to the bottom. In the study of these 

 flies, no matter who agrees as to synonymy, 

 whether generic or specific, if they have not 

 done their work exhaustively their agreement 

 is of slight interest to the matter in hand. 



* Psyche, October, 1910. 



The statement that I am going to make now 

 will probably astonish some people, but I can 

 truthfully say that I would be greatly pleased 

 to see half the generic and specific names that 

 have been proposed in the Museoidea safely 

 relegated to the synonymy where they could 

 rest undisturbed and buried forever, with no 

 hope of a resurrection, a goodly sprinkling of 

 my own among the number; but such a con- 

 siderable reduction of names is hardly possible 

 of realization. Looking toward a consumma- 

 tion of final synonymy, however, I shall hope 

 to accomplish in the next few years some por- 

 tion of the work necessary to this end, during 

 the course of which I here pledge my word 

 that those generic and specific names of my 

 own making will receive the same impartial 

 treatment at my hands as all others. My one 

 wish in this matter is to secure certainty be- 

 fore putting a name into the synonymy. The 

 making of incorrect synonymy is a much more 

 serious taxonomic offense than proposing fur- 

 ther names for forms already named. In the 

 latter case the forms can always be definitely 

 referred to by means of the names that have 

 been bestowed upon them, but in the former 

 case serious confusion is certain to ensue. 



The main interest here, as elsewhere in biol- 

 ogy, centers in the relationships, phylogeny, 

 bionomics and kindred aspects of the forms, 

 and this knowledge must point the way to a 

 sound taxonomy. In many groups of organ- 

 isms this knowledge largely follows a fairly 

 stable system of classification, but here it must 

 precede it. It only remains to impress re- 

 peatedly upon the student the extreme diffi- 

 culty at best of rightly interpreting the char- 

 acters in such a multitude of forms, many of 

 which are closely similar in the adult; the at 

 least present impossibility in many cases of 

 separating these forms on external adult char- 

 acters alone ; and therefore the absolute neces- 

 sity for making an exhaustive study with ref- 

 erence to all taxonomically utilitarian charac- 

 ters, external and internal, of all stages. 



Let no one think that I have over-estimated 

 the needs of this subject in the foregoing 

 remarks. I further wish to say, in conclusion, 



