George Herbert Carpenter

“ Societies for the discussion and publication of papers on entomology were naturally established as the number of students increased. The Société Entomologique de France was founded in 1832, the Entomological Society of London in 1834. Few branches of zoology have been more valuable as a meeting-ground for professional and amateur naturalists than entomology, and not seldom has the amateur—as in the case of Westwood—developed into a professor. During the pre-Linnaean period, the beauty of insects—especially the Lepidoptera—had attracted a number of collectors ”

“ In 1735 appeared the first edition of the Systema naturae of Linnaeus, in which the “Insecta” form a group equivalent to the Arthropoda of modern zoologists, and are divided into seven orders, whose names—Coleoptera, Diptera, Lepidoptera, &c., founded on the nature of the wings—have become firmly established. ”

“ His only unfortunate contribution to entomology—indeed to zoology generally—was his theory of pre-formation, which taught the presence within the egg of a perfectly formed but miniature adult. A year before Malpighi’s great work appeared, another Italian naturalist, F. Redi, had disproved by experiment the spontaneous generation of maggots from putrid flesh, and had shown that they can only develop from the eggs of flies. ”

“ While the insect fauna of European countries was investigated by local naturalists, the spread of geographical exploration brought ever-increasing stores of exotic material to the great museums, and specialization—either in the fauna of a small district or in the world-wide study of an order or a group of families—became constantly more marked in systematic work. ”

“ The embryology of insects is entirely a study of the last century. C. Bonnet indeed observed in 1745 the virgin-reproduction of Aphids, but it was not until 1842 that R. A. von Kölliker described the formation of the blastoderm in the egg of the midge Chironomus. Later A. Weismann (1863–1864) traced details of the growth of embryo and of pupa among the Diptera, and A. Kovalevsky in 1871 first described the formation of the germinal layers in insects. ”