REVIEWS. 
53 
of the curious dialects that certain naturalists, on either side of the Alps, 
have muffled in the folds of the toga. Erichson has given a recipe for such 
cases when, criticising a compatriot, he goes on to say—“ Our western neigh¬ 
bours, also, in their natural history works, favour us pretty often with a Latin 
which can only be deciphered through the medium of a literal retranslation 
into the vernacular idiom of the writers.” The closer affinity of the Runic 
idioms to the English may render us less sensitive to isms from this source 
than we are to the German, French, or Italian dialects of Latin. Certainly 
we have found no occasion for a Latin-Swedish dictionary, in order to under¬ 
stand Zetterstedt’s descriptions. We must demur, however, when he calls in 
question subsultans of Linnaeus, or borrows such a superfluous barbarism 
as anciennetas , foreign alike to the vocabulary of the great master, and of 
his classical models. But these are the rare and pardonable slips of a style 
sufficiently correct in general. To us the least satisfactory portion of 
Zetterstedt’s work is the composition and arrangement of the families. 
Commencing with Tabanus , the series of the Brachycera is made to end in 
Phora, followed by the Coriacece , which again the Nemocera succeed. 
Here the interposition of Phora and the Coriacece excludes all thoughts 
of a natural transition between the two great sections of the order. The 
system of the Diptera Scandinavian is avowedly an artificial one; but 
viewed simply as such, seems not to fulfil the end so well as to com¬ 
pensate for the disregard of natural affinities. Zetterstedt, in grateful 
deference to the authority of his illustrious master in Entomology, has re¬ 
tained the arrangement and names of Fallen’s older system to a great ex¬ 
tent, when, perhaps, his unbiassed judgment might have accorded better 
with the more recent systems of Meigen or Macquart. But in the Nemo¬ 
cera also, where he had not that precedent to constrain him, and his classi¬ 
fication is more original, some of the families appear as far from natural 
groups. Perhaps the most signal instance is that which Schaum has 
already singled out—the Pyphii, in which Ehyphus , the typical genus, 
possessing three equal and equidistant ocelli, an ambient vein, and normal 
system of venation, stands associated with Ceroplatus and Cordyla, two 
genera transferred from the Mycetophilince , a family whose characters are 
nearly the opposite of those; while the larvae of the two are no less diffe¬ 
rent, that of Ehyphus being amphipneustic,* those of the Mycetophilince 
peripneustic. f Another genus, Pachynema, having three ocelli, and want¬ 
ing the suture of the mesonotum that is characteristic of the Tipulides, with 
which it is ranked by Zetterstedt, should probably also be referred to the 
. * With anterior and posterior spiracles only. + With intermediate spiracles also. 
