Stephens’ Catalogue of British Insects. 125 
ever, on two separate orders, and on one large group, works of superior 
merit and research. Mr. Marsham had given to us a Species of British 
Coleoptera, the commencement of an Entomologia Britannica, which 
proceeded no farther than its first volume ; Mr. Haworth had published 
about three-fourths of the British species of Lepidoptera ; and the Rey. 
W. Kirby had, in his Monographia Apum Angliz, almost exhausted, in 
every point of view except that of affixing names to his subdivisions, the 
very extensive subject of the British species of Bees. To these must be 
added Monographs of a few, and but a very few, genera, chiefly of 
Coleoptera, and a correct idea will be obtained of the total amount about 
twenty years since of our information as regarded this extensive depart- 
ment of our native Fauna. The Diptera, exceeding even the Lepidop- 
tera in number of species; the great mass of Hymenoptera, at least of 
equal extent ; the Trichoptera, even now an almost unknown subject ; 
the Veuroptera; the Hemiptera, &c.; may be said to have been at that 
time almost utterly untouched. 
But since that period a more active spirit of enquiry has existed, and 
investigation has been both better and more extensively directed to the 
acquisition of information on this interesting subject, although until 
within the last few years but little has been published respecting it. Of 
the entomologists whose names have been previously mentioned, the Rev. 
Mr. Kirby and Mr. Haworth have continued the pursuits in which they 
had already distinguished themselves ; the latter has completed his Lepi- 
doptera Britannica, and the former has given a monograph of a large 
genus of Coleoptera, and had also prepared an almost equally complete 
account of the species of the extensive family of Staphylinide, of 
which, in geographical distribution, these islands seem, as Mr. Kirby 
has himself remarked, to be the metropolis. Mr. Spence, the excellent 
colleague of Mr. Kirby in the Introduction to Entomology, has also given 
a monograph of one interesting group. Two families of Coleoptera, 
almost utterly unknown to entomologists at the period first alluded to, 
have been admirably illustrated both by the pencil and the pen of Mr. 
Denny, and the two species known to Marsham have been increased to 
upwards of forty, partly by his exertions, but principally by those of Dr. 
Leach. The published labours of the distinguished zoologist just men- 
tioned are limited, as regards our present subject, to a few monographs, 
