25 



in 1826. These volumes consist of a series of "Letters" from one 

 friend to another discoursing upon the habits and structure of insects 

 in a chatty and attractive manner. The work is replete with an 

 enormous number of observations taken from practically all the best 

 books of natural science hitherto issued. Many editions have been 

 published. Most public and private libraries of the early part of the 

 century contained a copy, and for many years it was the popular 

 natural history of insects. 



Others we might mention, had we time, such as Samouelle, who 

 wrote "The Entomologist's Useful Compendium," a book par- 

 ticularly adapted for collectors, the forerunner of Merrin, etc. ; 

 Duncan, who wrote and illustrated numerous volumes in Jardine's 

 Naturalist's Library, a cheap and popular series of books ; Rennie, 

 whom Stephens charged with piracy of his works, issued a small 

 pocket-book, "Conspectus of British Butterflies and Moths." This 

 last is remarkable for the English names of ingenious manufacture 

 applied to every species, even of the micros. 



We must now leave authors of our own country and turn to the 

 continent. Hiibner we have already spoken of in eulogistic terms. 

 His splendid work was continued in the first two decades of the 

 century, and after his death, in 1826, it was carried on by Geyer and 

 Herrich-Schaffer. The letterpress was almost nil, but the plates 

 were in hundreds and exquisite in their delicate accuracy. 



In 1807 appeared the first of a long series of seventeen volumes 

 commenced by Ochsenheimer, an actor of Vienna, who had already 

 written a small work on the " Moths of Saxony." Mutual objects of 

 study drew to him a much younger actor, and a most energetic 

 student of Nature, Treitschke ; together they collected insects, 

 together they worked on the stage, and together they studied when 

 work was over ; but, after four volumes were issued, the elder man 

 died, in 18 16, and at short intervals other volumes were brought out 

 by Treitschke, until we get the seventeenth in 1835. At the time 

 they formed a companion letterpress to Hiibner's plates, and contain 

 much that is original and of permanent value. "The Butterflies of 

 Europe " was for years a standard work. 



Herrich-Schaffer, a doctor of Ratisbon, who had assisted Geyer to 

 complete what Hiibner had le(t unfinished, afterwards issued a series 

 of six volumes, from 1843 to 1856, supplementary to Hiibner's 

 works. This work was a thoroughly good systematic natural history 

 of every known species of Lepidoptera indigenous to the continent of 

 Europe, illustrated with hundreds of plates, for the main part figuring 

 species and forms not on Hiibner's plates. The colouring and the 

 figures generally, although not quite equal to Hiibner's, leave little 

 to be desired. The analyses and classification suggest that the 

 scientific work of Herrich-Schaffer was of a high order, and the test 

 of time has proved it so. 



The father of the modern study of the Micro-lepidoptera un- 

 doubtedly is Prof. Zeller, of Glogau, Germany, and I am indebted 



