Die Lepidopteren der Schweiz

Abstract

“IN the evening of a busy life I hand over for publication a book which, for a generation, has been suspended before my mind as an object to be attained. When in the summer of 1849, m tne sunny days of youth, I, an indefatigable traveller, and passionate lover of Lepidoptera, for the first time traversed our glorious country in an extended sense, the idea of a Lepidopterous Fauna of Switzerland was conceived.” In this manner the author (who is Professor of Pathology in the Polytechnic of Zürich) commences his introductory remarks. It may be well to state here that Dr. Frey is a Swiss only by adoption (we believe a native of Frankfort on the Main); and this will explain why it was not until 1849 that any extended journey in Switzerland had been made by him. His writings on Swiss Lepidoptera are familiar to all European students of the order. Many of these are monographic on special genera or groups, chiefly of the Micro-Lepidoptera, and in 1856 a volume of 430 pages—“Die Tineen und Pterophoriden der Schweiz” (a descriptive work)—appeared from his pen. To English readers his short, but very suggestive, paper on the “Tineæ of the Higher Alps,” published in the Entomologists' Annual for 1858, can scarcely be forgotten. Now, “in the evening of life,” as he terms it, he comes before the entomological public with his magnum opus. We heartily congratulate him thereupon.

Die Lepidopteren der Schweiz.

Von Prof. Dr. Heinrich Frey. 8vo. Pp. xxvi. and 454. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1880.)