June. 1913 Bulletin oj the Brooklyn Entomological Society 73 



1823 to 1840, with 770 colored plates. He published, in 1829, a 

 catalogue, printed on one side, for use as labels. He described 

 the insects collected on the second polar voyage of Commander 

 Ross, and later wrote up the coleoptera collected on the expedi- 

 tion of Capt. King to the Straights of Magellan. Other 

 Dale charter members were J. C. Dale, the foremost lepidop- 



Newm. terist of the day, Edward Newman, whose activity 

 has left 62 species and 23 genera in the checklist, 

 Westw. J. 0. Westwood, of Cambridge, who ruled British 

 natural science ten years later, Shuckard, the translator of 

 Burmeister's "Handbook of Entomology," Henry Denny, author 

 in 1825 of a monograph on the Pselaphidae and Scydmaenidae of 

 England, a work with 14 colored plates, George A. Gray, 

 Gray describer of four American species, senior assistant 



in zoology in the British Museum, A. H. Haliday, of 

 Dublin, who described many new local species and was the best 

 entomological authority in Ireland, John G. Children, who wrote 

 in 1836 on the insects and arachnida collected on Back's voyage 

 in search of the North Pole, and Prof. Babbington, whose chair 

 of botany in Cambridge Kirby had refused, and who wrote on 

 the Dyticidae taken by Chas. Darwin on the voyage of H. M. S. 

 Beagle to South America and Australia, 1826 to 1836. 



Moreover, the supply of entomological periodicals was just 

 as good as it is now. There were in active circulation the Zoo- 

 logical Journal, Isis. and the Magazine of Natural History, as 

 well as the" Annals of the Linnean Society." The transactions 

 of this famous society are filled with discussions of coleopterous 

 classification, with Kirby, MacLeay and Westwood the principal 

 disputants. 



Kirby's last work is the one connecting him vitally with 

 the history of North American coleoptera. Dr. John Richardson 

 had sailed, as naturalist, with Sir John Franldin. After working 

 for nearly fifteen years on the insects caught on this expedition, 

 Kirby pubHshed his report in 1837, the "Fauna B oreali- Ameri- 

 cana. " The insects themselves were presented to the British 

 Museum in the joint names, Richardson and Kirby. Thence- 

 forth the Rector of Barham lived for thirteen years in honored 

 retirement. His own collection was left to the Linnean Society 

 of London, his first love. His contribution to the coleopterous 



