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satisfactory than a quickening of one's realization of liow little 

 is known concerning it. There are whole orders of animals 

 whose geographical range in Australia has scarcely even begun ta 

 be worked out. Even in the CoJeoptera — one of the orders that 

 has received most attention — there are comparatively speaking 

 very few genera of which it would be safe to affirm that it had 

 been definitely /^rorec? 63/ /«c^5 to be principally connected with 

 a southern or a northern latitude in Australia, and so forth. 



There are vast tracts of the continent of whose fauna we know 

 very little. And even of those parts which have been more 

 carefully investigated, the investigation has been productive of 

 little more than a skimming of the surface (at least, as far a» 

 regards publication). I am not making mere guesses when I say 

 this, for it can be supported with facts. Let me state a few 

 facts. In respect of the vast order Iletaiptera, including all its 

 near allies — Homoptera, &c. — there is not, and, as far as I can 

 ascertain, there has not been a single Australian worker — at any 

 rate, not one who has published any scientific work on the subject. 

 The same thing may be said, I believe, of the Orthoptera and 

 Nenroptera. One Australian is working at the Diptera ; one at 

 the Ilymenoptera. 



I am not overlooking the fact that here and there an isolated 

 note may have been published on some member of one or other 

 of these groups ; I believe, indeed, that the late Mr. W. S. 

 Macleay, of Sydney (standing almost alone as an Australian 

 scientific entomologist of the last generation) did publish descrip- 

 tions of a few members of the orders I have named — or some of 

 them ; and possibly one or two others may have just touched 

 the sul^ject. But there is no one who is working at them, and 

 publishing on them in Australia in any systematic fashion. And 

 how little has been accomplished even in those orders which have 

 received more attention than others is realised almost distressingly 

 by those who are working at them, in the enormous proportion of 

 undescribed species that accumulate in any collection — accumulate 

 with rapidity and to an extent that almost leads one to become 

 confused and despairing amid the un^\ ieldy mass of material. 



Here, again, let me cite specific proofs of what I say. In the 

 family Hydrophilidtf^ (a family containing some of the largest 

 species in the whole order Coleoptera), my own small collection 

 contains more species than the total that had been described 

 from all Australia up to the date when the last edition of the 

 " Catalogue of Australian Coleoptera " was published (some six 

 years ago). Among the smaller Coleoptera the case is still more 

 remarkal)le ; in the family Cissidce (which is numerously repre- 

 sented in Australia) four years ago no Australian species what- 

 ever had been described ; in the Dermestidce 13 species had been 



