three thousand bird-skins of about one thousand species, at least twenty
thousand beetles and butterflies of about seven thousand species, and
some quadrupeds and land shells besides. A large proportion of these
I had not seen for years, and in my then weakened state of health, the
unpacking, sorting, and arranging of such a mass of specimens occupied a
long time.
I very soon decided that until I had done something towards naming and
describing the most important groups in my collection, and had worked
out some of the more interesting problems of variation and geographical
distribution (of which I had had glimpses while collecting them), I
would not attempt to publish my travels. Indeed, I could have printed
my notes and journals at once, leaving all reference to questions of
natural history for a future work; but, I felt that this would be as
unsatisfactory to myself as it would be disappointing to my friends, and
uninstructive to the public.
Since my return, up to this date, I have published eighteen papers
in the "Transactions" or "Proceedings of the Linnean Zoological and
Entomological Societies", describing or cataloguing portions of my
collections, along with twelve others in various scientific periodicals
on more general subjects connected with them.
Nearly two thousand of my Coleoptera, and many hundreds of my
butterflies, have been already described by various eminent naturalists,
British and foreign; but a much larger number remains undescribed. Among
those to whom science is most indebted for this laborious work, I must
name Mr. F. P. Pascoe, late President of the Entomological Society of
London, who had almost completed the classification and description
of my large collection of Longicorn beetles (now in his possession),
comprising more than a thousand species, of which at least nine hundred
were previously undescribed and new to European cabinets.
The remaining orders of insects, comprising probably more than two
thousand species, are in the collection of Mr. William Wilson Saunders,
who has caused the larger portion of them to be described by good
entomologists. The Hymenoptera alone amounted to more than nine hundred
species, among which were two hundred and eighty different kinds of
ants, of which two hundred were new.
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