INSECTS 



Chester, under the presidency of Mr. Hoyle of the Owens College 

 Museum. 



Besides these bodies, which are exclusively devoted to the study of 

 insects, nearly every town in Lancashire has its field club or some form 

 of natural history society. At many of such societies papers on en- 

 tomology are read and discussed, but few of them publish more than 

 an abstract of their proceedings. Larger and more comprehensive 

 societies, such as the Liverpool ' Historic Society of Lancashire and 

 Cheshire,' ' Biological Society,* and ' Literary and Philosophical Society,' 

 have from time to time published papers dealing more especially with 

 the entomology of the district. 



In earlier days the ' Manchester Banksian Society,' which flourished 

 between 1829 and 1836, formed a centre for the naturalists of that 

 time in south-west Lancashire, and most of the early Lancashire ento- 

 mologists appear to have been members of it. 



At least two other more exclusively entomological societies seem 

 to have existed in Manchester at a somewhat later date : ' The Northern 

 Entomological Society,' which meets at the house of one of the members 

 at Old TrafFord, Manchester, and was in existence at any rate in 1862 ; 

 and the ' Manchester Entomological Society,' which seems to have 

 flourished from 1857 to some time in the 'sixties.' These societies 

 appear however to have published no transactions or proceedings, and 

 their meetings were probably of rather an informal character. Indeed it 

 is difficult now to secure any authentic or consecutive information as to 

 their character or results. 



In the lists which follow, the local distribution of the orders 

 Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera (Aculeata), Hemiptera, and Orth- 

 optera is given with as much detail as the space at our disposal will admit. 

 These lists are far from exhaustive, and additions to all of them are 

 yearly being made by students of the several orders. Few of the older 

 entomologists appear to have realized the importance of the accurate 

 recording of the localities of their captures, and the greater part of these 

 lists is due to the exertions of more modern workers. 



In regard to the other orders, Neuroptera, Trichoptera, Diptera, etc., 

 there exists no material for the compilation of lists that would be 

 of value for publication here. Of the Neuroptera and Trichoptera 

 no authentic records are known to the writer. The Diptera have 

 been to some extent studied by the late Benjamin Cooke of Liverpool 

 and the late Rev. H. H. Higgins of Rainhill. The former published 

 a list of Diptera taken near Manchester and Southport in the pages of 

 the Naturalist, No. Ivii.— Ix. vol. 5 (1880), and the latter a short list of 

 the Syrphidce of the Liverpool district in the Transactions of the His- 

 toric Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (1858). Neither of these 

 lists however is very complete and in some cases perhaps not absolutely 

 trustworthy, and as neither professes to represent the order as it is gener- 

 ally distributed throughout the county they are not reproduced here. 



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