isso.] 279 



celery-fly, which, to our knowledge, rendered acres of celery fields of no value. It 

 is possible the judicious application of a preservative at a critical moment might have 

 saved much of the crop. A few words as to prevention and cure. We have little 

 faith in the possibility of the latter, because absolute concerted action over a large 

 district cannot be obtained, and without it all attempts are useless ; the former 

 should be regarded as the main object to be held in view. 



Samuel Constant Snellen van VollenTioven, the worthy successor of Do Haan, 

 as Director of the Entomological portion of the Eoyal Museum of Natural History, 

 Leyden, departed this life on the 22nd of March, 1880. 



He was born at Eotterdam on the 18th of October, 1816, and was consequently 

 in his 64th year at the time of his decease. The last letter received from him by 

 the writer was written at the end of December last, in which he complained tliat he 

 was " miserably sick and ill," his illness being caused by " nothing else than the 

 natural influence of the detestable weather of this month." 



To entomologists who did not know VoUenhoven personally, it must sufHce to 

 say that his was of a most genial disposition, ever ready to assist the student, and 

 whose loss in Holland it seems almost impossible to replace. The portrait of him, 

 published in the Transactions of the Dutch Entomological So-iety, although a 

 tolerable resemblance, gives no idea of the pleasant expression of his features. 



The large collections of insects which from time to time have arrived at the Leyden 

 Museum from the possessions of the Dutch government in the Eastern Ocean, en- 

 abled VoUenhoven to continue the work commenced by De Haan, on the Crustacea 

 and Papllionida;, in a series of " Essais d'une faune entomologique de I'archipel 

 Indo-Neerlandais," one of which, on the sub-family Pierides, with 7 plates,* he 

 dedicated to the unwortliy writer hereof. Two other of these " Essais " were 

 devoted to the Hemipterous sub-families Scutellerides (1883) and Pentaiomides 

 (1868), each with four coloured plates. 



The insects of the Order Hemiptera were indeed especial favourites with Vol- 

 lenhoven, who published, in 1878, a fine volume, entitled, " Heraiptera-Heteroptera 

 Neerlandica," with 22 plates, 8vo, 'S Grravenhage, containing descriptions of all the 

 species which have been found in Holland ; and, in his last letter to the writer, he 

 stated that he was engaged in preparing a Memoir on some Semiptera, having 

 received a large series of insects from M. Lansberge, which he was then engaged in 

 arranging. But it will be by his Memoirs on the transformations of different species 

 of saw-flies {Tenthredinidce) that VoUenhoven will be best known in England : the 

 text of these very careful and excellently illustrated life-histories having from time to 

 time been translated by Mr. May (whom the writer had the pleasure of first meeting 

 at the house of VoUenhoven, in Leyden), and published in the "Zoologist," of 

 Edward Newman. 



The Ichneumonidee were also carefully studied by VoUenhoven ; and, besides 

 his " Schetsen ten gebruike bij de Studie der Hymenoptera " (a series of extremely 

 useful plates, containing outline figures of all the modern genera of the Linnean 

 Ichneumones, including the minuti),'he undertook an extensive work, with the title of 



* Published in large 4to, by Martimis Nijhoff, La Haye, 1865. 



