WCP2398

Letter (WCP2398.2288)

[1]1

Cambridge

[Massachusetts]

May 15 / [18]792

My dear Sir3

I am very surprised to see by your note in Nature4 (p[age]. 582) that you hold to the Lepidopterous nature of Bryeria.5 If you will compare it with the figures of different species of Dictyoneura6 figured by Goldenberg7 in his Fauna Saraepontana Fossilis 2es Heft S[tück]. 18 I think you will acknowledge that you are "referred to some group of insects with which it more nearly agrees" and indeed that it can scarcely be generically separated from them. Further you will scarcely doubt that Dic- [2]9 tyoneura is a Neuropteran10 or something very akin to it.11

I would acknowledge however that I have no photograph of Bryeria; only a heliotype12 which is by no means "beautifully sharp"[.]

Yours very faithfully | Sam. H. Scudder13 [signature]

1
The page is numbered 24 in pencil in the top RH corner.
2
Year inferred from dates of birth and death of author.
3
The recipient is ARW.
4
Wallace, A. R. (1879). Did Flowers Exist During the Carboniferous Epoch? Nature 19: 582-582.
5
ARW states with reference to Breyeria borinensis "The photograph which I possess is so beautifully sharp that it brings out the minutest details, and a careful examination and comparison of it with specimens and drawings leads me to the conclusion, that in the general character of the wing-neuration it is strictly lepidopterous and of the Bombycine type …" (see Endnote 4).
6
Genus of fossil insects from the Carboniferous period (314.6 to 306.95 million years ago).
7
Goldenberg, Carl Friedrich (1798-1881). German palaeontologist with interest in plant fossils of the Carboniferous period.
8
Goldenberg, F. (1857). Fauna Saraepontana Fossilis. Die Fossilen Thiere aus der Steinkohlenformation von Saarbrücken, 2es Heft S. 1-60. Saarbrücken, Neumann.
9
The page is numbered 25 in pencil in the top RH corner.
10
Insect order which includes the lacewings and their relatives.
11
See Scudder, S. H. (1885). Dictyoneura and the Allied Insects of the Carboniferous Epoch Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 20: 167-173.
12
A photomechanically produced plate for pictures or type made by exposing a gelatin film under a negative, hardening it with chrome alum, and printing directly from it.
13
Scudder, Samuel Hubbard (1837-1911). American entomologist and palaeontologist. He was President of the Boston Society of Natural History (1864-1870, 1880-1887) and co-founder of the Cambridge Entomological Club and its journal Psyche (1874).

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP2398.2288)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP2398,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP2398