50 THE entomologist's record. 



of every capture. There were, however, no plates, structural or other- 

 wise, and no localities were given, and very little information beyond 

 the specific descriptions. Something- further was still wanted, and our 

 wants were not supplied till Canon Fowler began, in 1886, the publi- 

 cation in parts of his Coleoptera of the British Islands, eventually 

 issued in five volumes. This work is the high water mark of our 

 knowledge of the British coleoptera, for though year by year small 

 additions to our lists are being made by the discoveries of new species, 

 and gradually some of the synonymic tangles left still unravelled by 

 Canon FoAvler are being worked out, still, the whole of these could be 

 easily dealt with in a small supplementary volume. Canon Fowler's 

 book is remarkable for the great attention paid, for the first time, to the 

 distribution of species, and for the structural details shown magnified 

 on so many of the plates. Where genera and species are separated by 

 obscure structural characters, often difficult to see, or requiring long 

 verbal explanations to make them understood, a good enlarged draAviug 

 is of the utmost value to the student, and one often wishes that more 

 of this kind of thing had been given in the plates of these five 

 volumes. A book on such a scale was bound to have a few inac- 

 curacies, and, at times, we find the tabular descriptions hardly fit in 

 with the detailed descriptions of the species, but I have no hesitation 

 in saying that Canon Fowler has greatly increased the number of 

 workers in this field of science by the admirable text-book he 

 has given us, and has enormously simplified the work of everyone ; 

 the knowledge of this must be some slight recompense for 

 the severe labour involved in its preparation. I hope that, as 

 this year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of the 

 concluding (fifth) volume, we may have the pleasure of hearing 

 that Canon Fowler has on hand a supplement. My own copy is 

 full of pencil notes, and so, too, I know are those of others, all of 

 which will be gladly placed at the disposal of the author for his use while 

 preparing a supplement. Canon Fowler and Dr. Sharp published 

 jointly in 1893 a Catahxjin', the last to appear during the century. 



It is impossible in the space at my disposal to do justice to the serial 

 entomological literature of Great Britain during the past 100 years, 

 Mr. Capper in his presidential address to the Lancashire and Cheshire 

 Entomological Society in 1898 {Eitt. Record, x., p. 54) dealt fully with 

 this subject. At Christmas, 1851, appeared the first volume of the 

 J'J)itiiiiiulo(iist\s Annual, a publication which appeared for twenty years, 

 and is still a mine of valuable information to coleopterists. Much of 

 Eye's best work appeared in its pages, in his annual reviews of the 

 advances made both in knowledge of the science and of our indigenous 

 beetle fauna. Here, too, appeared, in 1857 (p. 85) and 1858 (p. 78), 

 E. W. Janson's well-known articles on myrmecophiloiis coleoptera, in 

 which this interesting branch of work was first brought to the notice 

 of British workers. Neglected again in great part for many years, Mr. 

 Donisthorpe has during recent years taken up this subject, and his 

 industry, patience, and knowledge of it are well shown in the numerous 

 articles which have appeared during the last two years in the 

 pages of this journal and in those of the Knt. Mo. Mai/azine. 

 The Annals of Natural Histori/, which first appeared in 1838 ; The 

 ]'Jntoiiiolo[/ist, which had a brief life in 1840-42, and then again reap- 

 peared to appear continuously from 1864 to the present date ; The 



