Alexander Henry Haliday - Coleoptera and Lepidoptera

Coleoptera and Lepidoptera

The standard works on the Coleoptera of the northern parts of Europe were in Haliday's time in mostly in French, Latin, and German and these were indispensable for monographic study. Haliday possessed copies of Gyllenhal's Insecta Suecica : Coleoptera sive Eleuterata (1808–27), Erichson's Die Kafer der Mark Brandenburg 1837 and later works by Schaum, Kraatz, von Kiesenwetter, Redtenbacher, Fairmaire and Laboulbene.He had a comprehensive collection of Coleoptera and sought authoritatively named specimens from English and continental authorities. However he wrote very little on this group. The British Isles literature for this popular group was very confused by problems of synonymy recalled as The Fifth Labour of Heracles since the largely unacademic entomologists elsewhere in the British Isles lacked language skills. This problem also arose in Lepidoptera which Haliday largely ignored also, although maintaining lists and collections. In Lepidoptera he lacked the essential continental literature. In Ireland also the microscopic Hymenoptera and Diptera are more readily collected, especially in the North, and the macrofauna diversity is very limited by geography so that Ireland the Hymenoptera and Diptera offer more scope for taxonomic study especially of higher taxa.