SYNOPSES, CATALOGUES. AND LISTS OF NORTH 
AMERICAN INSECTS. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Inquiries regarding the works most useful for the determination of 
our native insects, as also about the most useful general works of ref- 
erence, are among the most constantly recurring ones received by the 
Entomologist; but satisfactory and short replies are in most instances 
impossible, for the reason that the information is not contained in a 
few comprehensive works, but is scattered through many different peri- 
odicals and other publications. A complete list of such works, even of 
those pertaining to a single Order of insects, is too long to be given in 
an ordinary letter, and to obviate the difficulty experienced in such 
correspondence this bulletin has been prepared. 
It was not our intention to compile a complete bibliography of the 
classification of North American insects, but to give briefly the refer- 
ences to such works and papers as are most useful for the identification of 
our insects. Thus, we originally planned to give only the titles of mon- 
ographs or synopses of families or subfamilies and to reject all papers 
which contained disconnected descriptions of new species, or revisions 
and synopses of isolated genera. But while preparing the bulletin it 
was felt to be advisable to include smaller synoptic papers. For i nstauce, 
several large families, e. g ., the Scarabaeidse among the Ooleoptera, have 
recently been quite carefully revised, but the literature is in the form 
of synopses of single genera which, in their aggregate, form a more or 
less complete monograph of the whole family. In this case either these 
smaller synopses had to be mentioned in this bulletin or the whole fam- 
ily had to be omitted. 
On the other hand, many of the monographs here mentioned are an- 
tiquated, so as to be of little value at the present time ; or they are 
monographs comprising the genera and species of all countries, and 
difficult for the student of the American fauna to use, from the fact that 
the descriptions of the American genera are almost lost amongst the 
mass of foreign material. 
It were futile to attempt to discriminate in such an enumeration 
between the more useful and the more or less useless, but as a rule we 
would recommend to the student to consult rather the later than the 
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