90 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Death in the plague of 1564-5 overtook him before he had com 

 pleted his manuscript on insects, which thereafter had a curious 

 and eventful history. His notes, together with those collected 

 by Dr. Edw. Wotton, came into the possession of Dr. Thomas 

 Penny, a physician and botanist of the age of Elizabeth who 

 labored some 15 years to complete the compilation, dying (in 

 1589) before he had finished . The manuscript was later pur 

 chased by Thomas Moufet (1560-1604), a London physician, 

 who arranged and prepared the matter, adding some 150 figures, 

 and himself died without publishing the work. Many years 

 afterwards the MS. came into the hands of Sir Theodore May- 

 erne, one of the Court Physicians of Charles I, who finally pub 

 lished it in 1634, nearly 100 years after it had been started by 

 Gesner. This work, known as Moufet's Theatrum Insectorum 

 (" Insectorum sive minimorum animalium Theatrum "), is most 

 valuable as a compendium of all the ancient knowledge, includ 

 ing references to over 400 authors, and contains 500 woodcuts 

 distributed in the text and is notable as being the first work de 

 voted exclusively to insects. 



Ulysse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), a nobleman of Bologna and 

 professor in the University of Bologna, was an indefatigable com 

 piler. His Historia Naturalis, in 14 volumes folio (1599-1640), 

 published for the most part posthumously, treats of insects in 

 volume IV, entitled " De Animalibus insectis," which was pub 

 lished during his lifetime (1602), and contains practically a sum 

 mary of all that had been previously written on the subject. 

 Latreille styles his work "an undigested and wearisome com 

 pilation," but, as pointed out by Lacordaire, it was a power 

 ful influence in forming the taste for the study of insects, which 

 later was to take a more original character. That he is not 

 altogether a compiler, also, is suggested by his reference to him 

 self as traversing vineyards, fields, marshes, and mountains ac 

 companied by his draughtsman and amanuenses to draw and 

 write whatever he wished to record (Brooks). Aldrovandi's 

 classification of insects is based on the medium they inhabit, and 

 in it true insects are confused with Annelids. His two main 

 divisions are respectively terrestrial and aquatic insects, and his 

 subdivisions, based on the number and character of the wings 

 and feet, pretty effectively mix up the modern orders. 



