Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 414 pages of information about Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2.

Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 414 pages of information about Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2.

(Footnote.  Volume 12 1818 pages 454 to 478.  A description of several new species of Insects collected in New Holland by Robert Brown, Esquire, F.R.S. etc., by the Reverend W. Kirby, M.A., F.R.S. etc. 33 species described, 13 figured on tab. 23.  Mr. Kirby, in his century of Insects published in the same volume, described 17 New Holland species, and in the same celebrated paper founded four new genera upon Australasian Insects, Adelium, Rhinotia, Eurhinus and Rhinaria.  He would have described other genera but for his fear of interfering with Germar’s labours on the Curculionidae.  N.B.  Strongylium chalconotum is from Brazil and not from Australasia as indicated.)

The French voyages of discovery under Freycinet,* Duperrey, D’Urville, and Laplace have contributed very much to extend our knowledge of the Natural History of the Southern islands, as the publication of the History of the Voyages of the Uranie, Coquille, Astrolabe, and Favorite, amply testify; we are more especially indebted to Admiral D’Urville, who seems to unite the seemingly incompatible duties of commander of an expedition with an enthusiastic love of and search after insects.  M. Guerin-Meneville published the Annulose animals of the Voyage de la Coquille, in which New Holland genera and species take a prominent place.  Dr. Boisduval described those collected on the expedition of the Astrolabe, he also published the first Fauna Entomologica of New Holland and the Pacific; in his two volumes he gives a synoptical description of all the species he met with in the Parisian collections, indicating also such as he found in books whether he had seen the specimens or not.  More detailed descriptions are looked for on some future occasion by the entomologists of this country from the learned and talented author of so many well-known works.

(Footnote.  Voyage autour du monde etc. sur les corvettes de S.M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne 1817 a 1820 Paris 1824 Partie Zoologie.  Freycinet’s Voyage, but for the lamentable shipwreck of one of his vessels, would have added much to our acquaintance with the Natural History of the places visited.  Messrs. Quoy and Gaymard, Medecins de l’expedition, published the Zoological part of their notes.  They refer with regret to the disastrous accident which deprived them of large collections of Insects made more particularly in the environs of Port Jackson.  They describe and figure but one insect from New Holland (Curculio lemniscatus from Shark Bay) a spider from Port Jackson (Aranea notacautha Quoy, Dolophones notacantha Walckenaer Apt. 1 383) in which the brown callosities at the end of the cylindrical abdomen were taken for eyes, a position rectified by Walckenaer as above and by Kirby in his Bridgewater Treatise where he gives a copy of the French figure of this singular spider—­Two Crustacea, one (Ocypode convexus) from Dirk Hatterick’s and the other (Pagurus clibanarius) from Shark Bay, are all the Annulose animals described or figured as coming from New Holland, from the pitiable circumstance above alluded to.)

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