Abstract
TIMES have changed since the founders of entomology considered it sufficient to use the words “in Indiis,” when they were unacquainted with the locality of an insect they were describing; nor would it be possible now to publish a volume of “Insects of India,” like Donovan's, issued no longer ago than the beginning of the present century, in which many of the species represented on the plates are conspicuous South American or African butterflies. At present it is hardly considered lawful to describe an insect without an exact locality, and the number of species has increased to an extent of which the older entomologists never dreamed. We cannot at present be acquainted with much fewer than 300,000 species of insects from all parts of the globe, and yet none but a few, even among entomologists themselves, have any conception of how much yet remains to be done before our knowledge of the insects of the world can be considered anything like complete; and some entomologists of great experience now mention ten millions as a mere guess at the approximate number of existing species.
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KIRBY, W. The Beetles of New Zealand1. Nature 49, 459 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/049459a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049459a0