Fehruary, I9t4 Bulletin of the Broof^lyn Entomologtcal Society 7 



The posthumous volume of John Ray (sic on the title page; 

 spelled Wray in most documents), a work of 415 small quarto 

 pages published in London, 1710, traveled far and fast. It 

 contained a rough classification of insects, differing mainly 

 from the modern in the inclusion of the Crustacea. Latreille 

 himself never wholly abandoned the idea of a close connection 

 between the two groups. Ray estimated that there were 20,000 

 kinds of insects. An early master, a Frenchman born in 1683, 

 Rene A. F. de Reaumur, published a number of research works 

 in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences. His great work 

 appeared in parts 1734 to 1742 from the Imprimerie Royale, 

 " Memoires Pour Servir a 1' Histoire des Insectes," seven quarto 

 volumes with thousands of exact anatomical drawings. A few 

 years later the work was reprinted in Amsterdam in twelve small 

 octavo volumes. This edition was so large that it is now no 

 rarity. A set comes frequently into the market for less than 

 half the cost of publication. No better proof of its importance 

 need be adduced than the fact that it was still used as a text 

 book in 1812. 



All these works inspired Linne and equally Etienne Louis 

 Geoffroy, who was born in Paris, 1727. 



If Linne is the "Father of Natural History," this man 

 should be known as the "Father of Entomology," and to him 

 belong by right many of the honors worn by Fabricius. Never- 

 theless his place in the Hall of Fame has become appreciated 

 only during the last forty years. Previously his genera had been 

 ignored or overridden. 



The name is a famous one in French science. An uncle, 

 Etienne Francois Geoffroy, wrote a volume of 472 pages of text 

 and 729 plates on the medicinal properties of 719 plants and 134 

 animals. This work, published posthumously in 1767, was the 

 first great materia medica. His younger brother, Claude Joseph, 

 had a famous collection of natural curiosities and wrote treatises 

 on them. The famous Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, (1772- 

 1844) professor of Zoology in the Jardin des Plantes, is either of 

 a different family altogether, or of kin too remote to trace. His 

 son, Isadore, was a physician and writer on medical entomology, 

 (1805-1861). 



