Article beginning on page 111.
Psyche 3:111, 1880.

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PSYCHE. .
THE YELLOW FEVER FLY.
BY HERMANN AUGUST
It is not without precedent that certain facts or observations in natural history sud- denly acquire a great fame, go more or less over the whole scientific world, and are forgotten with wonderful quickness, when they have been found out not to be true. Some twenty-five years ago the history of the famous yellow fever fly was every-
where told and largely analyzed. It seems that the height of its glory was in 1855 ; I say it seems, as I have been unable
to see any account or even any mention
of it in a scientific publication or a news- paper. Gentlemen, who were largely con-
nected with such pkblications in former
times, assure me that the matter was at
that time much spoken of in periodicals, but that they cannot give any quotation of an article. Upon application to the well known physician, Dr. St. Julian B. Rav-
enel, in S. Carolina, I obtained the answer that although the Doctor had almost for- gotten about it, yet with some effort of memory he recalled that during the epi-
demic at Norfolk in 1855, a fly appeared in swarms, which the people there said
had never been seen before, and which they called the yellow fever fly. The Doctor
had sent some of them to the late Prof. L. Agassiz for examination ; but these are
not now to be found in the collection of HAGEN, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
the museum. The Doctor, however, states
that he has since found the same fly in
Charleston, S. C., in dark, close places, even in perfectly healthy seasons, and thinks that it' only becomes immeasurably multi- plied in the dirt and filth of all kinds pro- duced by pestilence. It has never been
observed in Charleston during epidemics. This is the only direct information I was able to obtain. The collection bought by the Museum of Comparative Zoology from
Prof. Loew, contains one specimen, col-
lected in 1848 in New Orleans by the late Prof. Schaurn, and three others, one marked as the yellow fever fly. The species has never been described. It belongs to Sciara, and a careful examination of the descrip- tions of all the species quoted in Baron Os- ten Sacken's new catalog of N. A. diptera, shows that none of them belong to this
species. I was not able to compare the
descriptions of Sciara nigra Wied.
The fact that the species appeared in
swarms is also new. A list of swarms
of diptera, given by Prof. Weyenbergh
(Tijdskr. v. Eutom., 18611, records 29,
but none of Sciara.
I believe that a description of the species is very desirable, so that its former curious history, and the fact of its swarming, may not. be lost.




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