21 



Our Authorities : an Introduction to the Early 

 Literature of Entomology. 



By Hy. J. Turner, F.E.S. Read September 2 7^rd, 1909. 



Part II. 



At the end of my former paper * on " Our Authorities," reference 

 was made to the " dozens of workers of repute in entomology who 

 lived and wrote in the earlier half of the nineteenth century." It 

 occurred to me that a summary of what the chief of these workers 

 did, coupled with an exhibit of the more interesting books, might 

 form the subject of one of our evening meetings of this present 

 session. 



Hence these few notes, culled from various sources, and illustrated 

 with numerous books, which a number of our members, at my sugges- 

 tion, are very kindly exhibiting to-night. 



As we get nearer to our own times it becomes increasingly more 

 difficult to select authors for comment, on account of the multi- 

 plicity of workers of more or less repute, and of the necessity for 

 those workers to concentrate their energies upon restricted sections 

 of the Insecta. 



Looking to our own country first, we find that in 1803 was 

 published a thin volume entitled " Lepidoptera Britannica," by A. H. 

 Haworth. This was succeeded in the next twenty years or so by 

 three similar volumes, the whole work being described as "a mono- 

 graph the most complete, most learned, and most useful ever pub- 

 lished on the entomology of Britain." Haworth described from 

 Nature, and he described well. He possessed large collections ot 

 all orders of insects, both British and foreign — a splendid basis for 

 description and for comparison. Not only was he an admirable 

 entomologist, but his botanical knowledge and work was of no mean 

 order. He possessed a large collection of living succulent plants, 

 and his memoirs on certain groups, including one on the Mesembry- 

 anthemum, are almost classical works in botany. Many of his 

 specimens of insects still exist in our national collections, having 

 been purchased by Stephens, whose collections are now in the British 

 Museum (Natural History), South Kensington. 



Then we have two illustrious and laborious describers and syste- 

 matists, working simultaneously, but not always in harmony — -Curtis 

 and Stephens. 



Curtis was originally an artist, and drifted from drawing insects to 

 the study of their habits, forms, and relationships. Between 1824 



* " Proc. South Lond. Ent. and Nat. Hist. Soc," 1907-8, pp. 1-7. 



