A lovely copy of the first edition of this fundamental study of bees: this is one of only a small number of books noted by Musgrave, including those of Lewin and Donovan, published before 1805 to include notice of any Australian insects. Kirby, a keen entomologist, based a significant amount of his work on his access to the Banks collection ('has omitted no opportunity of consulting… the magnificent collection of Sir Joseph Banks, so liberally open to naturalists…'), including making comparison with specimens from the Endeavour voyage.

A lovely copy of the first edition of this fundamental study of bees: this is one of only a small number of books noted by Musgrave, including those of Lewin and Donovan, published before 1805 to include notice of any Australian insects. Kirby, a keen entomologist, based a significant amount of his work on his access to the Banks collection ('has omitted no opportunity of consulting… the magnificent collection of Sir Joseph Banks, so liberally open to naturalists…'), including making comparison with specimens from the Endeavour voyage.

Kirby (1759-1850) was born in Suffolk, and famously collaborated with W. Spence on the Introduction to Entomology. This is the first of his works to include any Australian specimens, although he would later jointly publish work based on collections made by Robert Brown. The actual Australian specimens from his collection were presented by the Entomological Society of London to the British Museum in 1863.

Kirby's study includes a very good bibliography, noticing the works of Donovan, Fabricius, Latreille, Panzer, Roemer and other entomologists. The most relevant entry is Kirby's notice of the Melitta cyanura from the cabinet of Banks 'from New South Wales', and which 'should come next to M. signata (y), which stands with it in the same cabinet, from the same country' (Volume I, p. 212).