Ixxvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



Rev. T. A. Marshall has given (Entom. Monthly Mag. i. to iii.) an 

 Essay towards a knowledge of the British Homoptera, in which 

 occasionally allusion is made to the European distribution of our 

 British species. 



" The position of the Insect-fauna of Britain may be thus stated : — 

 The late J. F. Stephens commenced in 1827 a systematic descriptive 

 work of all the orders of British Insects as ' Illustrations of British 

 Entomology ;' it ceased to appear after 1835, until a supplementary 

 volume came out in 1846. The Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Orthoptera, 

 Neuroptera were wholly, the Hymenoptera partly, done, the Hemi- 

 ptera and Diptera altogether left out. In 1839 Mr. Stephens pub- 

 lished, in a more compendious form, a ' Manual of British Beetles.' 

 In 1849 an attempt was made to supply the gaps in the British 

 Entomology left by Stephens, and a scheme of a series of volumes 

 called ' Insecta Britannica ' was elaborated, in which Mr. F. Walker 

 was to undertake the Diptera, Mr. W. S. Dallas the Hemiptera, and, 

 great progress having been made in our knowledge of the smaller 

 moths since 1835, 1 undertook to write a volume on the Tineina. This 

 scheme was so far carried out, that three volumes on the British 

 Diptera by Mr. F. Walker (assisted by the late A. H. Haliday) 

 appeared in 1851, 1852, and 1856, and my volume on the British 

 Tineina in 1854. In 1859 another great group of the smaller 

 moths was described by S. J. Wilkinson, in a volume entitled ' The 

 British Tortrices.' The British Hemiptera not having been done 

 by Mr. Dallas, were undertaken by Messrs. Douglas and Scott for 

 the Bay Society ; and in 1865 a 4to volume was issued, containing 

 the Hemiptera Heteroptera, leaving the Homoptera for a second 

 volume, still in progress. Even in this elaborate work little or 

 nothing is said of the geographical distribution out of Britain of our 

 British species. The same remark will apply to the late J. F. 

 Dawson's ' Geodephaga Britannica,' published in 1854, toWestwood's 

 « Butterflies of Great Britain,' published in 1855, and to E. New- 

 man's ' Illustrated Natural History of British Moths,' published in 

 1869. 



" I believe I do not at all exaggerate if I say that for many years 

 Entomology was pursued in this country with an insularity and a 

 narrow-mindedness of which a botanist can scarcely form a con- 

 ception. The system of only collecting British Insects was pursued 

 to such an extent that it was almost a crime to have a non-British 

 insect in one's possession : if accidentally placed in one's cabinet it 

 might depreciate the value of the entire collection ; for Mr. Samuel 

 Stevens can assure you that the value of the specimens depends very 



