Editorial

Abstract

In this issue, Professor Michael Winterbourn has an interesting article on the question of 'amateur' versus 'professional' practitioners of entomology, making the amusing cricketing analogy of the 'gentlemen' and 'players'; those who had to work for a living and those who played for fun. In the early days of entomology, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, almost all those who studied insects were amateurs, from Linnaeus to Charles Darwin, and most would have called themselves naturalists, collecting biological specimens and natural artefacts with an unbounded enthusiasm. In a very well written series of essays, which make excellent reading, Wigglesworth (1976) notes that A.W Haworth, a lawyer, founded the first entomological society in England, Kirby, a man of private means, and William Spence, a rector who believed that the study of insects revealed the wisdom of God, together produced a seminal work on insects which was the standard for fifty years. Wigglesworth also records that Sir John Lubbock, who in the course of a busy public life (which included sponsoring the Early Closing Act and giving us Bank Holidays), found time to demonstrate that bees could distinguish colours, and that ants navigated by noting the position of the sun..