Book Description

Excerpt from Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation, Vol. 12: January to December, 1900 In working out the rich collections made by Signor Leonardo Fea, in Burmah, he gave us, in 1893, a complete Revision and compendium of our knowledge of the group. This is, perhaps, his most important work, and is still considered to be the basis of the systematic work that has since been done in the Orthoptera. In fact, in working at any division of the order, the student finds this Revision to be indispensable. An important faunistic work on Orthoptera collected by Professor Kukenthal, in the Malay Archipelago, appeared last year, an a notable philosophic study, Observations on the Colours of Insects, was published at Leipsig in German and English in the previous year. In it the author classifies the various systems of insect coloration, and, although everyone may not entirely agree with the views expressed therein, no thinker could read a more suggestive work. Among the numerous, smaller essays and faunistic papers, one of the most remarkable is Ueber hypertelische Nachahmung bei den Orthopteren (1883), in which the author put forward his well known theory of hypertely which explains, or rather, gives a name, to the lack of explanation of phenomena which appear to the author to be inexplicable according to the accepted theories of development. The Brunner collection of Orthoptera is probably the finest in existence; it includes among other noteworthy things, the great majority of Stal's types of Phasmodea. The great Swedish entomologist based all his work on this group upon the specimens in Brunner's collection, but Brunner himself defies the student to follow out Stal's work in detail without the possession of his types. The fact that Brunner is now engaged in completing a monograph of the Phasmodea is, therefore, the more interesting. His vast collections are contained in a great number of cabinets, and very many species are represented also by examples in spirits. In the summer of 1898, the writer of this memoir had the honour of spending the day in the company of the great entomologist, and nothing could have been more interesting than the veteran's reminiscences of past collecting and past students. He mentioned a strange story of a lapsus memoriae. A system of the Gryllodea published by him in 1874, enlarged and developed with due acknowledgment by de Saussure three years later, was completely forgotten in 1893, for, in his great Revision (p. 193), he enthusiastically exclaims, "As to the Gryllodea, the more I study the monograph published by M. de Saussure, the more I am convinced that it is not the system of M. de Saussure, but that of the Creator Himself." After this naive and unstinted praise of his own work, as Dr. Krauss has pointed out, he adds three genera and nineteen species to "the system of The Creator." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."