OF WASHINGTON. 109 



general writings, Gerstaecker, Leuckart, Leech, Donovan, Bates, 

 Brauer, Kaltenbach, Taschenberg, Lubbock, Riley, Wallace, 

 Packard, and Lintner. Scudder's work in palaso-entomology 

 and Laboulbene's in anatomy should also be mentioned. 



This summary of the workers in entomology from the earliest 

 period to our own generation has been most fragmentary and 

 incomplete, but may be sufficient to indicate the great interest 

 which the subject has always aroused, and furnishes a basis for 

 the estimate which will be given later of the extent and character 

 of the work which has been accomplished. 



The Literature of Entomology. 



That the accumulated writings on insects of all these centuries 

 of activity make a very considerable mass of literature, hardly 

 needs stating. It may be interesting, therefore, to make as care 

 ful an estimate as may be of the actual amount of published 

 matter which has resulted from these several hundred years of 

 investigation and printing of results. 



The conditions, in the matter of available literature immedi 

 ately prior to Linne, are somewhat indicated by Reaumur, who, 

 writing in 1734, complains of the fewness of works in the French 

 language which treat of insects and says that even in other lan 

 guages the number is not great and the majority of them contain 

 a large amount of observations for the most part made in such a 

 manner as to please only those already interested in such studies, 

 and not calculated to arouse interest in others. He mentions 

 critically the writers of the periods preceding his own, most of 

 whom have already been referred to in the preceding portions of 

 this paper. 



In such ancient compiled works, however, as those of Pliny, 

 ^Elien, Aldrovandi, Moufet, etc., the number of authors referred 

 to is often very large in some instances including almost every 

 important writer of antiquity. In the Theatrum Insectorum of 

 Gesner, Moufet, et al., over 400 ancient authors are listed, many 

 of whom, of course, referred to insects incidentally only. Pliny 

 refers by name to less than a dozen Roman and foreign writers 

 in the text of his chapter on insects, but he often mentions writers 



