
Darwin's war-horse: beetle-collecting in 19th-century England
'Those Lepidoptera are for children to play with... Give me the Coleoptera, and the king of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepidotpera and Neuroptera for little folks; and Coleoptera for the men, Sir!' (quoted in Linssen 1959). Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), poet and physician, was a dedicated beetle man.