publication of " Jurinean " Genera of Hymenoptera. 341 



in which Republics, Kingdoms and even Empires rose and 

 perished, and the very foundations of the world seemed 

 to be breaking up. 



Yet amid all this distress of nations and perplexity, a 

 more peaceful revolution — or rather evolution — quietly 

 pursued its course. The scientific movement which we 

 associate with the name of Linne was spreading and 

 progressing in a manner which, considering the unrest 

 and preoccupation in other matters of educated Europe 

 in that age, cannot but seem to us surprising. Simultane- 

 ously Kirby in England, Lamarck and Latreille in Paris, 

 Jurine in Switzerland, Klug in Germany, Fabricius in 

 Denmark, Schrank in Austria, Rossi in Italy, and many 

 other able men, continued to devote their best abilities to 

 one and the same object, viz. a revised classification of the 

 Linnean " Classis " Insecta. Many of these men had 

 nothing else in common. Schrank was a Jesuit; Kirby 

 a country clergyman ; Lamarck and Latreille called them- 

 selves (perforce or voluntarily) " Citoyens," and worked 

 under the aegis of the French Repubhc. Yet all con- 

 sidered themselves colleagues, and disciples of one master, 

 the incomparable Linne (ob. 1778). 



The present paper proposes inter alia to consider how 

 certain of these men handled respectively one particular 

 Ordo of the Linnean Insecta, viz. the Hymenoptera. 

 These at that date had been divided into twenty genera, 

 one of which was Apis. About a century later, the late 

 E. Saunders was able to publish a list, from Britain alone, 

 of twenty-eight genera, universally recognised as distinct, 

 which in 1793 were still all included in the single genus Apis. 



It was in this year (1793) that there appeared at 

 Nuremberg, with a Preface dated the 21st of August, 

 twelve sets of coloured figures with short diagnoses of 

 German insects. Each figure, and each description, 

 was on a separate sheet, and the sheets were not 

 bound together, but packed in a sort of wrapper or 

 envelope of coloured paper, bearing the date of its 

 publication and a list of the insects figured therein. 

 Corresponding titles were engraved on the plates, and 

 printed as headings to the descriptions. This was the 

 first instalment of a highly successful serial publication, 

 which (with occasional intervals of suspension for a year 

 or more at a time) continued to appear till 1813, certainly, 

 and perhaps a little longer, under the direction of its first 



