348
NOTES ON AUSTRALIAN DIPTERA. No. iv.
By J. R. Malloch.
{Communicated by Dr. E. W. Ferguson.)
(Five Text-figures).
[Read 27th August, 1924.]
Family DROSOPHILIDAE.
Since the completion of the manuscript of my paper in which I dealt with
this family (These Proc, xlviii., 1923, 611) and before its appearance in print
there appeared another paper, by Dr. 0. Duda (Ann. Mus. Nat. Hungar., 20,
1923, 24),* dealing with Oriental and Australian Drosophilidae represented in the
collection of the Hungarian National Museum. In this paper there are three
species described from Australia, Paradrosophila interrupta, Drosophila biradiata^
and D. australica. The first-named genus is not known to me, the second species
appears to be a Scaptomyza, and the third is close to inornata Malloch, but has
darker antennae and palpi.
In connection with the above-mentioned paper, it may be pertinent to indicate
that, in the opinion of many students, there is too great a tendency on the part of
some continental European specialists to split into a multitude of poorly differen-
tiated genera larger groups which have very close structural and biological af-
finities. This rapid erection of new nomenclatorial units 'based upon minor struc-
tural characters that are appreciable only by the ultra-specialist tends to bring the
whole systematic fabric into disrepute. I believe that it is only by the use of
characters that one can swear by that the study of entomology, or any other
branch of zoology, can enlist the number and the class of students that are essen-
tial to the development of a classification that will stand the test of time and
biological co-ordination. The splitting and resplitting of generic concepts, unless
on outstanding structural or fundamentally distinct biological characteristics, shows
frequently neither good science nor good sense, and appears to me to warrant the
statement, so often made, that a genus is merely a matter of opinion, whereas it
ought to be just as much a matter susceptible to proof as the specific concept.
Most frequently the worker who indulges in these nomenclatorial calisthenics
is one who confines his systematic work to one order, suborder, or
BioStor
