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the foundation of his great work, the ' Monographia Apum Anglise/ 

 which appeared in 1802, in two volumes 8vo. This work would 

 have been thought remarkable as the unaided production of a coun- 

 try clergyman and entomologist of no long standing, had it been a 

 mere description of a greatly extended number of the previously 

 recognised British species of the Linnean genus Apis ; but when we 

 consider that he had not only brought together and described up- 

 wards of two hundred species of the tribe, but with an admirable 

 largeness and correctness of view had divided them into numerous 

 families and subfamilies, so natural, that most of them have since 

 been adopted as genera, and that he took lessons in the art of etch- 

 ing for the express purpose of being enabled to give a correct idea 

 of the parts of the mouth on which his divisions were mainly founded, 

 we shall not be surprised that it excited the warmest admiration of 

 British and foreign entomologists on its appearance, and at once 

 elevated him to the rank of one of the first entomologists of the 

 age. 



During the next five or six years, Mr. Kirby collected materials 

 for, and contributed to the Linnean Society, two very valuable 

 papers on the genus Apion, in which he described a great number 

 of new species. 



In the year 1808, Mr. Spence, who had carried on an active en- 

 tomological correspondence with Mr. Kirby for the preceding two 

 or three years, proposed to him, with the view of remedying the 

 want of a good English introduction to the science, that they should 

 jointly write one — a proposal to which Mr. Kirby at once assented, 

 as he did to Mr. Spence's subsequent extension of it, that the work 

 should not be merely technical as was his first idea, but be thrown 

 into a popular form, comprising under various heads all the known 

 facts relative to the habits and economy of insects, and their noxious 

 or useful properties, &c., and in the shape of letters so as to admit 

 of a more discursive mode of treating the subject. The general 

 plan having been thus agreed on, Mr. Spence spent several weeks 

 with Mr. Kirby at Barham, in the spring of 1809, to fill up its de- 

 tails, and to commence the letters on external anatomy and orismo- 

 logy, which were the portions first written, and on this occasion and 

 on similar visits in subsequent years, every term and its definition 

 were discussed by the authors, and the other letters written by 

 each, jointly criticised. 



It would not be easy to overrate the influence which this work 

 (of which vol. i. was published in 1815, vol. ii. in 1817, and vols, 

 iii. and iv. in 1826) had on Mr, Kirby's subsequent entomological 

 career. Not only did it supply, under its various heads, suitable 

 places for introducing from his note-book, his numerous detached 

 observations during many years, on the manners, economy, &c. of 

 insects, which but for this opportunity would probably have been 

 lost to the world, but the necessity of extending his former studies 

 as to the anatomy and nomenclature of the parts of bees, to those of 

 all the other orders, and of investigating many new points of their 

 history, led to a great accession to his previous knowledge, which 



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