8 THE entomologist's EECORD. 



more than doubled, and stood at 69 {Libelliila, 54, JEshna, 7, 

 Af/rion, 8). Apart from the epoch-making works of Linne and 

 Fabricius, comparatively little was done in odonata in the 18th centm-y. 

 A few species were figured and described by Drury, De Geer, Sulzer, &c., 

 but there'are only two authors whose works demand our special attention, 

 Midler, who enumerated 23 Danish species in his Fauna Fridrichstlaluia 

 (1764), to which he added one or two more in his subsequent works ; 

 and Harris, who laid the foundation of our knowledge of the British 

 dragonfiies by figuring 10 species (more than any other English author 

 except Evans, has done till the last year of the nineteenth century), in 

 his Kd-pimtion of KwilUh Inserts, published in 1770. We must not, 

 however, omit to notice the work of Eoesel von Rosenhof , the miniature 

 painter of Nuremberg, who published a series of ten plates of odonata, 

 in the second volume of his Imecten-lh'lnstifunKi, which bears date 1749, 

 and is consequently pre-Linnean, Especially considering the time at 

 Avhich they were produced, Roesel's coloured plates are excellent, and 

 his illustrations of the transformations of European dragonfiies still 

 form one of the best series that has been published. It is a curious 

 illustration of the total ignorance of German in England at the end of 

 the 18th century, that Donovan {Brit. Ins., vol. v., p. 103, 1790) writes : 

 " We have introduced on the annexed plate (177), figures of the cater- 

 pillars of P/ialacna jilni, copied from the works of the two most accurate 

 entomologists that have described or figured the insects of any part of 

 the European continent, and though, unfortunately, the descriptions are 

 written in a language so little understood as to be wholly useless, the 

 figures are very interesting." Later still, we find .J. F. Stephens 

 lamenting bitterly that Ochsenheimer and Treitschke's great work Die 

 Scliwetteiiiiu/e von Knvopa, was written in German instead of Latin, 

 even though Stephens himself was writing his own book in English. 



Part II. — General works on Odonata. — (1801-1900). — \Ye have 

 seen that in the last works of Fabricius, the total number of described 

 species of dragonfiies stood at 69. In 1839, Burmeister published the 

 latter part of the second volume of his Ilandbuch tier IJiitoviolni/ie, a book 

 Avhich marked an epoch in the study of most of the orders of insects 

 included in it, and raised the number to 174 species, divided among 

 six genera as follows: — Aijrion (32), L'ahqttery.v (17), Piastatnuniia (9), 

 JE^chna (2G), Kpoplitlialwia (9), and Lihellula (81). In 1842, Rambur 

 in his Histoire natiirelle cles Insectes, Xerropteres, divided the odonata into 

 a great number of genera, mostly new, and raised the number of species 

 to 248, of which 139 were placed under Libellula alone. In my own 

 Sunnni/iiiic Cataloi/iie of Xexr^tptera Odonata, published in 1890, I 

 estimated the number of species then known as about 1800, and the 

 number has since been considerably increased. I will now deal Avith 

 works on the separate famihes and subfamilies according to my book. 



LiBELLULiDAE. — LibelLidinae. — Dr. Brauer published a synopsis 

 of the families and genera of odonata in vol. xviii., of the Verhamlliuirfen 

 (ler li\ /.'. Xoidoi/. Ihitan. Gescllscltaft in M'ien (1808), and gave a list of 

 the species of lAbellidinae and i 'ordidinae with localities. This work 

 is mentioned here because it is mainly of importance for the study of 

 the Libclhdinae. He admitted 40 genera, which I raised to 85 in my 

 " Revision of the subfamily Libellidinae, with descriptions of new 

 genera and species," published in the Transaetions of the Linncan Soeietij, 

 Xoido'ni, scr. 2, vol. xii., pt. ix (August, 1889). Dr. Karsch subsequently 



