560 ^ CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



where continued to expand their collections. One major instrument of advance 

 was the world monograph. Marseul's Histerides (1853-1861), Candeze's Ela- 

 terides (1857-1900), Sharp's Dytiscidae (1882), Regimbart's Gijrinidae (1882- 

 1907), A. Schmidt's Aphodimae (1922), Jeannel's Trechinae (1926-1928), and 

 Breuning's Carabus (1932-1937) are scattered examples of such studies. 



A second approach was through the study of an entire exotic fauna. Wol- 

 laston's six volumes on the beetles of the Atlantic islands (1854-1867), and 

 Sharp, Perkins, Blackburn, and others' six hundred pages on Coleoptera (1900- 

 1910), in the Fauna Haivaiiensis illustrate this sort of work. The most elaborate 

 study of a foreign fauna is Godman and Salvin's Biologia Centrali- Americana. 

 The Coleoptera section of this lavish work appeared between 1880 and 1910 in 

 18 quarto volumes, 8,703 pages, listing 18,029 species (11,675 of them new), with 

 350 plates (297 colored), illustrating 8,596 species. No finer monument than this 

 exists to the British at the apogee of their imperial and industrial power. The 

 17 volumes on beetles (1906-1939) in the Fauna of British India, represent a 

 partial study of another enormous beetle fauna. 



A third approach to the problem of the world fauna is through the study 

 of a restricted group for a restricted area. Among the more impressive recent 

 examples may be cited A. Hustache's Curculionides de Madagascar (1924, 582 

 pp.), R. Jeannel's Coleopteres carabiques de la region malgache (Madagascar 

 1946-1948, 1146 pp.), and P. Basilewsky's Harpalinae de'Afrique et de Mada- 

 gascar (1950-1951, 616 pp.). 



P. Wytsman's Genera Insectorum (1902-1938) was an attempt — never com- 

 pleted — to describe the genera of the world and list the species. Most of the 75 

 fascicules devoted to beetles were small, but the following were among the more 

 sizable: Buprestidae by C. Kerremans (1902-1903); Elateridae by 0. Schwarz 

 (1906-1907), Pselaphidae by A. Raffray (1908), Cicindelinae by W. Horn 

 (1908-1915), Histeridae by H. Bickhardt (1916-1917), Aleocharinae by A. 

 Fenyes (1918-1921), Carabinae by M. G. V. de Lapouge (1929-1932), Lagriidae 

 by F. Borchmann (1936). The Junk-Schenkling Coleoi:>terorum Catalogue (1910- 

 1940, 31 vols., nearly 25,000 pp.) provided a bibliographical catalogue of about 

 215,000 species. Supplementa, under the editoriship of W. D. Hincks, began ap- 

 pearing in 1950. "Winkler's Catalogus Celeopterorum Regionis Palaearcticae 

 (1924-1932) involved the expansion of the conventional European catalogue to 

 cover a wider area. 



What may be said of the new points of view that have appeared in this 

 century in European coleopterology in addition to the continued spectacular 

 development indicated in the foregoing paragraphs ? 



First, there is the greater detail of the more recent work. Darwin showed 

 that only individuals exist, and taxonomists followed by insisting on basing 

 their studies on ever-increasing series of specimens. Moreover, with the growth 

 of distributional and ecological studies, there is an increasing insistance on the 

 attachment to the individual specimens of precise data on locality, date, habitat, 

 and collector. 



Second, there was the widespread tendency on the Continent to investigate 

 infraspecific variation, with the result that large numbers of geographical vari- 

 eties or subspecies and nongeographical varieties or aberrations have been de- 

 scribed and named. The description and naming of very numerous non- 



