A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE
of Liverpool and N. Greening of Warrington. It was rearranged some years ago by Dr. Ellis of Liverpool, and the specimens being principally of local origin and in admirable condition it forms probably one of the best public collections of Lepidoptera in the provinces. In the other orders Liverpool possesses a fairly representative but small collection of exotic insects of the several orders. The British collections other than Lepidoptera are in process of reformation and will probably in course of time be worthy of the other excellent biological collections of the Liverpool Museum.
In the Owens College Museum of Manchester the insect collections are exceptionally good. This is particularly the case with the Coleoptera and Hymenoptera. The fine and extensive collection of exotic Lepidoptera presented by Mr. Schill of that town is also a noteworthy feature of the museum.[1]
Bolton in the Chadwick Museum possesses excellent collections of Lepidoptera and Coleoptera and good representative ones of Hymenoptera, Hemiptera and Diptera. In this museum also are the exotic Coleoptera collected by the late Mr. Gray of Bolton and presented to the museum.
The Preston Museum contains one of the best generally representative entomological collections in the provinces. It has been formed to illustrate the distribution of the Insecta of the world and includes Coleoptera, Orthoptera, Neuroptera, Hymenoptera, Hemiptera and Diptera. Besides these there is a very good local collection of over 500 species of Lancashire Lepidoptera and several cases illustrating life histories of insects, mimicry, protective resemblance, etc.
The Warrington Museum is of somewhat recent date, and the entomological collections therein are to a great extent in process of formation. The local Lepidoptera are already fairly representative and the other orders have not been neglected.
ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETIES
At the present time there are two societies in Lancashire founded for and exclusively devoted to the study of entomology. The elder of these is the Entomological Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.
This society was founded in 1877 by Messrs. S. J, Capper, Ben. Cooke, and a few other local entomologists. The first president was Mr. Capper, and he has worthily filled the chair ever since. The meetings were held in the Liverpool Museum till about 1901, when a removal was made to the Royal Institution, Colquitt Street, in that city, and periodical meetings during the session are now held at Chester and St. Helens. This society has done much to encourage the study of entomological science throughout the district, and has numbered amongst its members all the local entomologists of the last thirty years.
Recently a somewhat similar society has been founded in Man-
- ↑ The very complete and valuable collection of British Coleoptera formed by W. Reston of Stretford, Manchester, has lately been acquired by this museum.
