Alexander Henry Haliday

“ This left time only for a walk to Valentia ferry about sunset; the evening wet and blustery ; neither time nor tide favouring entomological researches. The only beetle seen on the shore was Anchomenus lavis. The shingle swarmed with the usual Diptera, Coelopa, Orygma, Halithea, Limosina. On some tufts of sea-pink, yet spared by the fretting tide, a few Aphrosylus ferox ; and among the wet gravel a single specimen of Clunio marinus* was observed, which, however, eluded capture in its slippery habitat. ”

“ I shall be very glad of the opportunity of examining the Hymenopterous Parasites of Diptera. I begin to think that Lucca will yield me more among these my oldfavourites, than of Diptera. I believe my last letter to you was written too far back, for me to have mentioned the capture of a species of Iteaphila (a Northern genus, I think, it was considered,) at no great elevation. I was driving, with a friend in one of the country vehicles, home from the Baths, out in the wildest, rocky, part of the valley of the Serchio, I was attracted by the conspicuous white flowers of a Cerastium. ”

“ It appears that they recognize in general sound principles of scientific nomenclature and chronological precedency, but they have by no means invariably adhered to these in practice. We are not prepared, indeed, to blame them for having retained—whether deliberately or from mere traditional habit—the modern trivial names of many species, to the exclusion of the more ancient, but now unfamiliar ones of the last century ”

“ We do not seem to understand each other as to the Cryptus aphidium of Fab. I either have misstated my opinion or forgotten the reasons I gave for thinking it of any other genus than Microgaster. I have looked and I think I doubted whether Linnaeus insect which is the same as Fabricius's be not a Microgaster as stated in my Guide - be good enough to give me your opinion. ..... I am sure any observations of yours will be highly valued by the men of science whom I have the pleasure of knowing. I hope therefore you will when you have leisure undertake the Conspectus of the Hymenoptera pupivora. ”

“ My belief is (and I can find nothing to shake it in other published papers) that media is a mere name; that vittata Curtis is not intended for the species I described under that name, and which subsequently (in 1838, Am. Nat. Hist.) I proposed to remove to a place under g. Sciomyza, as subgenus Anticheta; but all this is quite immaterial ;the only matter to be defined being that media is a mere catalogue name without characters. ”

“ The collection of insects injurious to the field & garden with the transformation, parasites &c for £100.The Australians are showing thus early a commendable zeal for Natural History,—expending considerable sums for collections, and books; and and Entomological Society has been formed out there. For the sake of Curtis’ widow & young children, I rejoice the collection has been disposed of to such advantage for them; but its local value ceases, in a great measure, with its removal from England; and it will be a loss for many years to all future labourers on the Insect Fauna of Britain. ”

“ Brandt together took, in eight days time, at the Baths of Lucca, I sent to Saulcy who is at work on this family, already not indifferently studied. I think nearly two thirds of the whole are considered new species by that authority. I don’t imagine that the range of Diptera is so limited locally, or that anything like such a proportion of novelties is to be looked forin that order, even extending the search to the South of Italy, now beginning to come within reach by railways, though not within the security of civilization unhappily. ”

“ Jussieu's plan of an uniform termination, as distinctive of the natural families, had been applied to the animal kingdom by Leach, deriving the family names from the typical genus, in the form of the patronymic in idae. The modern families are in great part equivalent to the genera of Linnaeus, or of Fabricius, in entomology, and thus may rank among the most marked groups in the systematic scale. ”

“ The literary disfunction between Northern and Southern italy which made it easier to find works printed at Naples, in the Libraries of Paris or London, than of Turin and Florence still operates. And judging from the works of the two Costas [Achille Costa and Giuseppe Costa] ] , the libraries of Naples were no better off as to the works published out of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies . Rondani says he will get to work at his Ortalidae in August. If you have any list of species occurring to your knowledge in Italy (Sicily and Sardinia included) I am sure it would be useful to him, communicated. ”

“ Here the generations of wingless females succeed each other, without access or production of the winged male except at distant periods. How far these periods are subject to rule we have no satisfactory evidence, or that there is any decline of the vitalizing energy of the female organization in the course of generations. In the Psyche helix, as observed by Siebold, the females alone have occurred during seven successive years, and the male insect does not appear to be known with any certainty, if that sex exist in nature. ”

“ When the sun has struggled out through the clouded sky as it does occasionally I have not neglected collecting as I must take exercise for health in any case when I can—but I have not obtained much. My chief search and a fruitless one has been for the purpose of replacing a genus of Hymenoptera my only two specimens of which yielded dinners to the Psoci while I was so long disabled by illness—I came upon the first specimen of Pegophila meridionalis a few days ago. ”

“ This morning, being an interval of dry weather, —but a sharp hoar frost, I went again to Pisa by an early train, & walked on to the sea coast where I spent the middle of the day. But on the sands all the - plants were still withered & dry, & there was nothing to be had almost, except under the marine rejectamenta & not much there, chiefly minute things. However the vegetation as well as animal life, is more forward that it would be at this same season in England, except in some favoured spots of the Southern coast. ”

“ Of Italy, which is occupying a great portion of my time at present, sending circulars out, writing letters etc. In the course of this month I hope it will be formally and legally constituted and before I start for next summer's visit (if it takes place) to Sicily, I may see the first part of the journal out. How long it may be live is another consideration. The existing scientific journals of Italy lead but a languishing life;—and the heads of the young are full of politics (to little good in many cases) , and to the sacrifice of literary & scientific studies. ”

“ My cousin and I move into Lucca Cassa Massoni for the four opening months of the year 1863. As soon as two individuals at present confined to these rooms are well enough to face the air and change of apartment. The continued hard frosts had for a good while with a clear sunshine has yielded to thaw mist and showers of Italian profusion. When the horizon clears I suppose the distant mountains will show that they have had their share of water in the form of fresh layers of snow. ”

“ Villa Pisane -Lucca 20 Dec 1868 My Dear Dr Loew I am sorry to learn by your’s rec yesterday, that you also are deprived by circumstance, of much of the pleasure to which one is accustomed to look forward in the family assembled above the hearth at Christmas. One needs a cheerful fireside surrounded by dear familiar faces, to be independent of things outside as to which I have just the same tale to tell as yours, of rain unintermitting. ”

“ ON SOME REMAINING BLANKS IN THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE NATIVE DIPTERA. The natural history of the Diptera, in particular, as I understand it, is the history of the changes through which they pass, and the manner of life of the larva. Arrived at the perfect state, the winged insect is usually content with light nourishment, such as the nectar drops from the chalice of a flower, the golden dust of the anthers, or the honey-dew with which the leaves are besmeared by colonies of Aphides. ”

“ Whatever may be thought of the freaks of fancy that some of its votaries have indulged in, however we may reprobate the perversions of truth and common sense which have been engrafted on it in certain quarters, this much is fairly to be said of the Transcendental school of Natural History, that its original principles were calculated to suggest, to a reverential spirit, some of the most striking arguments which Natural Theology has to offer for the infinite wisdom and universal agency of one God. ”

“ I should be anxious to obtain some compensation, by a meeting in that city, for the disappointment regarding our projected excursion in the Alps. I had expected to be out this week, for a few days, consecutively, in the Apennines, (alone —as a young Italian, who has collected the Coleoptera of the Bagni district, & was willing to have joined me, has been forbidden by medical authority) —but the weather has broken completely, so that an invasion of the mountains is not to be thought of, until the sky settles again, which it is not likely to do for some days yet. ”

“ I was at Florence for above a week but with little effect as to the Society or any scientific objects as I was escorting two ladies- cousins of mine—one of whom I am about to accompany to Rome and as she speaks no Italian and has travelled little abroad and never in this country my services are in constant requisition & I have to resign for the time all other objects. Also Stefonelli was ill, Piccioli occupied by the dangerous illness of his wife & Targioni on the point of setting out for Sardinia so that no conference was possible. ”

“ A general collation of the work—so far as it has been carried—with Stephens' Manual of British Beetles—or, indeed, with any other complete list of the indigenous species of this order, which we possess as yet—would lead to a very erroneous estimate of the proportion. We have confined ourselves to the comparison of a single family, one of the most extensive and most thoroughly investigated, and which, of all the great families of the order, has been earliest made the subject of a complete revision, subsequent to the date of Stephens' Manual. ”

“ It has led him, however, to institute fresh experiments, guarded with all the precautions the assurance of which he misses in the previous documents, and these have obliged him to admit the fact, in respect to the common silk worm, that the female moth is capable of laying fertile eggs without impregnation. The proportion of the eggs, however, which are capable of development in this case is small, and, generally, it would appear that a natural limit is set in this way to the propagation of the species in any but the ordinary mode of generation. ”

“ I have been able to take a fair proportion of bodily exercise this summer, without having undertaken any distant journey. And if I don’t feel myself capable of enduring the same fatigue, or mounting the same heights, as when I visited Monte Rosa in 1862, the lapse of time is enough to account for it, without repinings. When one writes ?? for the first cipher of one’s years, it is to be expected that the acme of vigour is pretty far past. I had one pleasant excursion, of three days, with the English chaplain of the Baths of Lucca, and his wife ”

“ The winter is now well set in here but when I get over to Pisa I find only the outskirts of frost extending to the neighbourhood, the Lungarno bright and warm, and our friends at Livorno say the name of frost sounds strange to them. My brother has been laid up at Brighton and will have so much to occupy him in London before he can get under way, that I am obliged to give up the expectation of having him for a little shooting here, before moving into town. So we move after Xmas into Casa Massoni in Lucca. ”

“ If instead of setting to steadily in the work of developing the natural riches of the country, & awaking industry, association etc to meet the financial difficulties, that press like a milstone [sic] ; her public men are to indulge magnificent schemes of political aggrandizement, influence in the councils of Europe etc etc I see little hope for the country, so favoured by nature, and lately so much by concurrent circumstances. I have written more than I almost hoped to have time for, and am called away to their affairs now; so adieu, in the hope of a reply. ”

“ The fallacy here is so palpable that it is hard to comprehend how it could for a moment have imposed upon a philosopher like Burmeister. The argument—if it is good for anything, and not a mere play upon words—goes equally to negative the real existence of species. ”

“ Sigr Pisani and I lead a sort of convent life here, without the “womankind,” often without even a maid-servant in the house,- silent piano & harp and youthful voices, only the song of the canarybirds & black-caps, to remind us of feminine tastes and accomplishments. ”

“ On the whole, looking at what I have got this summer, I am tempted to conclude that the Luccese affords less variety of Diptera, and fewer conspicuous species, than my own home in the north of Ireland! However, this has been a peculiar season as to weather, and a very unfavourable one for Coleoptera, as Ghiliani tells me. Bellardi has been so much engaged, for some time, on a Zoological Atlas, under the sanction of government, that he has sent me but a few & brief scraps for letters, and was unable to make a visit here this year, as I had asked him to do. ”

“ The journal is intended to be devoted to the Italian Fauna, not including notices of the species of western & southern Europe which may be looked for here—I am afraid however, from what you say of your engagements, that I must not hope for much until your intended retirement from official duty takes place. I hope the severity of the winter has not been unfavourable to your health—Here it has been productive of numberless cases of catarrh & bronchitis—from which I myself have escaped nearly free. ”

“ No form of Parthenogenesis, however, seems more remarkable or instructive than that which is present in connection with the economy of the common honey-bee. Many strange mistakes have prevailed from early times as to the history of the perfect societies of these insects, ruled by laws of instinct which have stimulated the curiosity of man, as much as their productive industry has served his uses and attracted his observation.But it has been only at a comparatively recent period that the true characters of the sexes have been anatomically fixed ”

“ I find there only a list of names given in the most compressed form, without addition to the specific name, except n.s. to the species afterwards described as new. Among those without addition is a Tetanocera media and as I find no such trivial name in Meigen, I presume it was an error of memory for some other familiar name. T. vittata is described as n. sp. Now in Curtis Guide, 1st edition A.D. 1829 (a mere list of names) there is a T. vittata Curtis, to which no reference is made by me; and in general I adopted the names of The Guide in describing new species. ”

“ His gardening passion may do no harm in diverting him from too close sitting at study — Only he takes it up so warmly that I think of his Snowdon experience and dread rheum which is so unkind to gardeners in our damp English climate — not so damp as this however — judging by the state of insect collection and metal fittings since I have been here. ”

“ If for a republication of a standard work of Entomology generally, Kirby and Spence's Introduction is the best value for the lowest price we know ; so are Lacordaire's volumes on the Genera of Coleoptera the cheapest of an original work. Estimated by the labour and materials they must have required, the information condensed in them, and the time and pains which they save the student, were it only as an index to the species, they would be worth their weight in silver at least. ”

“ Ztt., D. S— Zetterstedt, Diptera Scandinaviae
In conclusion, it appears from this list that while the history of many of the families is inferred only from the knowledge of that of a few genera in their earlier stages—sometimes from a single example,— and though the extent of that knowledge, in many cases, is very trifling, or little more than sufficient to guide us to further investigation, on the other hand there remain but three of the families in which we are absolutely without anything to be called information in regard to this part of their natural history ”

“ On the ascent of the hill, above the limit of the chesnut [sic] , I met, for the first time among these hills, the elm, in any plenty, mixed with oaks &c. I saw little insect-life after the great heat; but in the chesnut [sic] woods, under fallen leaves, I got a very few grown specimens of the interesting new Neuropterous genus, apterous and allied to Campodea ambulans, but with the forceps of a Forpicula. Since the rains commenced, some of the Spring insects begin to happen, but on the whole I have seen very little variety of Diptera, and very few of any larger species. ”