On Diopsis, a Genus of Dipterous Insects

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: XIV. On Diopsis, a Genus of Dipterous Insects, with Descriptions of Twenty- one Species. By J. O. Westwood, Esq., F. L. S. Read November 5th, 1833; and November 4th, 1834. THE immortal man whose name ve, as a body, have adopted as our own, terminated his zoological labours by the publication of the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: XIV. On Diopsis, a Genus of Dipterous Insects, with Descriptions of Twenty- one Species. By J. O. Westwood, Esq., F. L. S. Read November 5th, 1833; and November 4th, 1834. THE immortal man whose name ve, as a body, have adopted as our own, terminated his zoological labours by the publication of the Dissertatio Ento- mologica, bigas insectorum sistens, scil. Paussus and Diopsis, as though, to use the words of his countryman Dalman, Linnaeo hoc, ut videtur, erat con- silium, ut vellet absolvere iilustrem suum cursum entomologicum per pro- ductum quoddam insigniter singulare, vix quidquam magis singulare ex- cogitari potuit quam Paussus et Diopsis. Of the former of these two genera, in its present state, as a family, I have given a detailed account, which the Linnean Society has done me the honour to publish in the 16th volume of its Transactions. In order to show in some degree my sense of this honour, I have taken up the latter genus, and I now beg to offer to the Society the present memoir as a fitting companion to my former communication; moreover, the now prophetic, but, at the time, erroneous reference by Illiger to the Linnean Transactions for a memoir upon this genus, had a second-rate influence in this choice of subject. The Chief Interest of the genus Diopsis arises from the extraordinary elongation of the sides of the head into two cylindrical horns, which in some instances are as long as the whole body, and at the extremity of which the eyes, of a semi-globular form, are placed: the antennae also are inserted near the extremity of these protuberances at a short distance before the eyes. At first sight these horns might easily be mistaken for antennae; but they are inarticu- lated at the base as well as along the surface; they have, therefore, no i...