XXIV. 
enthusiasm of John Gould, whose magnificent monograph on the “Birds of Australia” 
was completed in 1848, and that on the ““Mammals of Australia” in 1863. 
With the much more numerous orders and species, and on the whole smaller and 
less conspicuous individuals to be dealt with, the knowledge of the Invertebrata was 
relatively much behind, and almost all that had been done was the work of non- 
resident naturalists. Of the zoological papers up to the year 1860 published by 
Australian Scientific Societies, all but a few were concerned with the Vertebrata, the 
more important exceptions being the Rev. R. L. King’s three papers on freshwater 
Entomostraca,* Mr. W. Swainson’s observations on Australian Mollusca,+ and the 
first and second of a series of contributions to a knowledge of Australian Polyzoa, 
continued up to the present day, by Dr. P. H. MacGillivray.t 
Entomology, which from the first had attracted the notice of European workers 
beginning with Fabricius, who in his Systema Entomologize (1775) described the 
Australian species in the Banksian Collection, had not been advanced by a single 
locally published original contribution from any resident naturalist. A work entitled 
“Natural History of the Lepidopterous Insects of New South Wales,” by J.. W. 
Lewin, a resident, had, however, been published in London as early as 1805; and 
several residents had contributed a few papers to European Journals later than this 
but prior to 1860. 
The decade 1860-70 was a most important one in the annals of Australian 
Biology, especially in New South Wales, for it inaugurated the improved condition 
of things, which, thanks largely to William Macleay, continues to the present day. 
The mother colony, New South Wales, instead of being last in the race, now began 
to come to the front, and this in spite of such drawbacks as that at this time and 
even until 1883, the Sydney University, the oldest of the colonial Universities, was 
without a Medical School, and consequently took no account of biology ; and that 
the total number of those in the colony with whom zoological pursuits were the 
serious business of life, and who held official positions by virtue of biological 
qualifications, amounted to one—the Curator of the Australian Museum, whom the 
exigencies of the time required to be, if the expression may be allowed, more or less 
a universal specialist. Within the period mentioned, the few old workers set to work 
with renewed activity, and a number of new workers entered the field ; much of their 
work began to be published locally not merely under the auspices of Scientific 
Societies, but in the form of separate publications, such as Cox’s “Monograph of 
Australian Land Shells” (1868), and Krefft’s “Snakes of Australia” (1869), while 
* Three papers in the ‘‘ Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen’s Land.” Vol. II. Part 2, 1852 
[1853], pp. 243 and 253: Vol. III. Part 1, 1854 [January, 1855]. 
+ Three papers. Ibid. Vol. III. Part 1, 1854 [1855], pp. 36, 42, and 46. 
+ Two papers in Transactions of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, 1859, Vol. IV. pp. 97 and 159 [1860]. 
