Stephens' Catalogue of British Insects. I2i"j 



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 pubUshed 

 about three-fourths of the British species of Lepidoptera ; and the Rev. 

 W. Kirby had, in his Monographia Apum Anglise, ahnost 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 JVeuroptera; the Hemiptera, &c.; maybe 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 Staphylinidee, 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, 



