378 the president's address. 



Whilst speaking of the sclerites I cannot omit to mention two 

 very remarkable papers in the Acta of the Turin Academy, by Dr. 

 L. Jurine, on the " Wings of the Hymenoptera," published in 1828, 

 the year in which Straus Durckheim's immortal Monograph 

 saw the light. Dr. Jurine worked out the structure of the wings, 

 and my own work shows the close correspondence between the 

 wings of the Diptera and the anterior wings of the Hymenoptera. 

 Straus Durckheim, although most eminent as an observer, was less 

 fortunate, I think, in his generalizations, and the theory which he 

 invented, and which is generally held with regard to the mechanism 

 of flight* in insects, appears to me to be utterly untrue. I cannot, 

 however, now enter into the details of the mechanism, which is far 

 more complex than Straus Durckheim supposed. And Dr. Jurine, 

 although he has very carefully described the more important 

 sclerites of the wing, did little to elucidate the mechanical problem 

 involved in flight. 



So far I have not had the pleasure of mentioning a single Eng- 

 lish work on the anatomy of insects, and our literature, it must be 

 confessed, is very meagre on this subject. We never had a Swam- 

 merdam, a Reaumur, a Lyonet, or a Straus Durckheim. 



The first English work of any note which I can mention is a 

 mere translation, W. E. Shuckard's translation of Herman Bur- 

 meister's Manual of Entomology, with additions by the author and 

 original notes by the translator, published in London in 1836 — an 

 excellent text-book at the time, but rather old now. 



There are two Englishmen, however, whose names must not be 

 omitted, although they were not specialists, and left no work on 

 insect anatomy to be compared with those which I have quoted. 



The first of these was Dr. Harvey, the discoverer of the circula- 

 tion of the blood. Harvey was an accomplished naturalist, and 

 had original and, in the main, correct ideas, with regard to the 

 metamorphoses of insects. 1 shall have to recur to Harvey when 

 I come to speak of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of living 

 discoverers in this branch of natural history. I allude, of course, to 

 Dr. A. Weismann. 



The other was John Hunter, who always observed and recorded, 

 and the reader of Hunter's works will find many admirable obser- 

 vations in insect anatomy. 



Before I conclude this portion of my address I would draw atten- 

 tion to what I consider far the best English account of the general 



