The Seventeenth Century 101 



the hands of several persons, chiefly Conte Lodovico Moscardo, a 

 Veronese nobleman. 



Samples of the Bolognian phosphor, called a " miracle of nature," 

 were contained in the collection of Moscardo, and described in 

 Ovvero Memorie del Museo Moscardo (Padua, 1656, and Verona, 

 1672) . The 1672 edition was made up of three books, one dealing 

 with antiques, another with stones, minerals, and earths, and a third 

 with corals, shells, animals, fruits, and other things. The phosphor 

 was also displayed in the Museum Kircherianum at Rome. 



The " Pietra luminare di Bologna, et sua storia " was the title of 

 a section in Lorenzo Legati's Museo Cospiano (Bologna, 1677) , de- 

 scribing the collection of Senator Ferdinando Cospi of Bologna, 

 which has been annexed to that of the famous Ulisse Aldrovandi 

 (1522-1605.) The other great naturalists of the sixteenth and seven- 

 teenth centuries also left collections. Remains of insects and shells 

 may be expected to last for several centuries but so far as the author 

 can learn, no specimens of glowworms, fireflies, or pholads survive 

 from those early times. 



The various learned societies had their own collections of rarities. 

 That of the Royal Society of London included a green stone (fluor- 

 spar) , which luminesced on heating, and the " Lanthorne Flie " 

 (Fulgora lanternaria) both described by Neremiah Grew in Mu- 

 seum Regalis Societatis (London, 1681) . C. A. Baldewein presented 

 a sample of his " phosphorus hermeticus " to King Charles II of 

 England in 1676, who in turn presented it to the Royal Society. 

 The Royal Society collection finally went to the British Museum in 

 1781, but mineral specimens cannot be traced today and nothing 

 remains of the " Lanthorne Flie," described by Neremiah Grew.^^ 



If the flowering of museums began in the seventeenth century, 

 they came to fruition in the eighteenth. National collections were 

 started in most countries, such as that of the British Museum in 

 England, when Parliament passed an Act to purchase the Sir Hans 

 Sloane (1660-1753) library and collections in 1759 for £20,000. 



The director of the Natural History section of the British Mu- 

 seum, Sir Gavin de Beer, informs me that some of Sloane's insects 

 are now in the Petiver collection, one of them a North American 

 firefly, Photinus pyralis, but that no example of the Jamaican firefly, 

 Elater (Pyrophorus) noctilucus ^^ remains. The Photinus specimen 



^^ Information kindly supplied me by Sir Gavin de Beer, Director of the Natural 

 History Museum, London. 



^' Professor L. Chopard of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris writes 

 me that three specimens of Elater noctilucus labeled " Amerique meridional " are con- 

 tained in the collection of E. L. GeofFroy (1727-1810) . They must date from the 

 second half of the eighteenth century. One of them might be " le marechal," described 



