6 4 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



refer to those of each nationality as they appear for the next few- 

 years. Sweden takes the lead, and we think it a curious fact, and 

 one worth notice, that although Europe owes most of her literature 

 and nearly all her art to the Latin peoples, that careful and accurate 

 study of nature which distinguishes the present century, seems to 

 have been the special heritage of the Gothic races. Italy, that foun- 

 tain and origin of all the humane arts, can show as entomologists only 

 a Scopoli and a Bonelli, while as far as I am aware the race that 

 produced a Murillo and a Cervantes, has never numbered among her 

 sons one single name that has added aught to our knowledge of 

 nature. Yet Sweden, the Ultima Thule of Europe, enriches man- 

 kind with a Linnaeus, and we find inscribed in the famous University 

 of Upsala, a long roll of entomological worthies from De Geer to 

 Simpson. Therefore to Sweden we will first turn and find Leonard 

 Gyllenhall — a singular character indeed. An officer in the king's 

 body-guard, his was not a profession in which, one would suppose, 

 there could be found either room or inclination for the study of cole- 

 optera, yet we see this old soldier at the age of 85, producing a most 

 minute description of insects, and especially coleoptera, for the great 

 work of his friend and neighbour Schonherr. His own principal book 

 was the " Insecta Suecica Coleoptera sine Eleutherata," published in 

 4 volumes in 1808. His collection was presented to the Upsala 

 Scientific Society, where very probably it is now to be seen. 



Schonherr, to whom I have just referred, was a member of the 

 Stockholm Academy. He, as we have seen, with the help of 

 Gyllenhall, published in 1806, his " Synonymia Insectorium," a work 

 more of compilation than one that marks any new departure in classi- 

 fication, but which contains descriptions of no less than some 3000 

 species of Rhyncophora alone. 



Among the Swedes we must also mention the parish cure Frisstrom 

 and the Professors Thunberg, Bilberg, Bohmacum, and Fabraeus ; 

 Ahlstedt too of the Finnish Abo, most northern of cities, all of whom 

 have contributed their quota of species to our own lists. 



We next turn to Russia, at that time so far behind the civilization 

 of Western Europe, and find that Moscow had its Imperial Society 

 of Naturalists, of whom we mention the Count von Mannerhiem, a 

 great authority on the Geodephaga, and whom we include in this era 

 although he appears quite at the end of it, about 1835 ; in St. Peters- 

 burg, too, Entomology was studied at the Academy of Sciences, and 

 we find there Escholtz constructing new genera of Sternoxi, and 

 even in Odessa we hear of the Professor Nordmann studying the 

 coleopterous fauna of the South. 



