MAY 7 1900 





JOURNAL OF VARIATION, 



Vol. XII. No. 1. Januaey 15th, 1900. 



Brunner von Wattenwyl (with iwrtrait). 



With this number we take great pleasure in presenting our readers 

 with a portrait of this most distinguished entomologist, and, as an 

 article from his pen is to follow on p. 2, the occasion seems appro- 

 priate for a short appreciative note. 



Although we are here concerned only with his work as the most 

 eminent orfchopterist of the day, it may interest our readers to know that 

 he was born at Bern, 77 years ago, and is a member of one of the oldest 

 Swiss families, but migrated when still a young man to Vienna, Avhich 

 he has sinc3 made his home. A member of the Aulic Council, he has 

 held a very high official position, and visited England in the year 1879, 

 as representative of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the occasion of 

 the International Telegraph Conference held at London. 



His first important publication upon the group on which he has 

 been for years the recognised authority, was Orthopteroloi/iscJw Studien. 

 Beitrhije zu Darwin s Tlieorie iiber die EntstelimKj dcr Artcn, in 1861. It 

 was followed in the same year by " Disquisitiones orthupteroloi/icae," in 

 which a large number of new European Orthoptera are described, and 

 the genus Thmimotrizon monographed. This was one of the most 

 important contributions to our knowledge of the Becticidae that had yet 

 appeared. It was accompanied by eight plates, very carefully executed 

 by the author, some of which are coloured, and that extremely well. 



Four years afterwards he published Xonveau Sijsteme des Blattaires, 

 which marked the commencement of a new era in the study of 

 Orthoptera. This volume has been taken as a model in all later mono- 

 graphs, and the modern classification of the Blattodea has been based 

 upon the system then first established. 



An important essay, entitled Die morphologische Bedeutumj der Seq- 

 menter bet den Orthopteren, came out in 1876, and two years later his 

 second great monograph was published. In this the large family of the 

 Phaneropteridae is exhaustively treated and the Locustodea are first 

 divided into a series of families. This series of treatises, which has 

 done more for the systematic classification of the Orthoptera than the 

 works of almost any other author, included monographs of the Steno- 

 pelmatidas and Grifllacridae (1888), Proscopidae (1890), Additamenta 

 to the Phaneropteridae (1891), and Pseadophi/llidae (1891). 



The Prod roil} m der earopiiischen OrtJiopteren (1882) is a complete 

 encyclopaedia of the European forms, and although our knowledge has 



