page_title: David Sharp (entomologist)
section_title: Publications
hierarchical_section_title: David Sharp (entomologist) / Publications
caption_attribution_description: David Sharp in 1909
context_page_description: David Sharp FRS was an English physician and entomologist who worked mainly on Coleoptera. He was among the most prolific publishers in the history of entomology with more than 250 papers that included seven major revisions and reviews and a highly influential work on the structure and modifications of the male genital structures among the beetle families. He was the editor of the Zoological Record for three decades.
context_section_description: Sharp was the author of more than 250 papers and larger works. Being connected with the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine and the Entomologist, in either an editorial or a reference capacity, many of his numerous shorter papers appear in these magazines. Yet others, as well as some of his more pretentious papers, will be found in the transactions of societies with which he was connected. Perhaps his earliest contribution to entomological literature was a paper on the British species of Agathidium (Coleoptera) read before the Entomological Society of London on 6 November 1865. An interesting discussion on heredity and kindred subjects between Sharp and Wallace, arising in connection with Westwood's introduction of the subject of "mimicry" at the Entomological Society of London in November 1866, was reported in the Athenaeum of 1, 8, and 15 December 1866, and gives Sharp's views at the time on this subject. A Revision of the British Species of Homalota (Coleoptera) was published by the Entomological Society of London soon after his graduation at Edinburgh. In November 1873 appeared a paper in Spanish – Especies nuevas de Coleópteros por Don David Sharp. This refers to insects collected by his friend G.R. Crotch, whose obituary notice Sharp contributed to volume 11 of the Entomologists' Monthly Magazine. The Object and Method of Zoological Nomenclature appeared in November 1873. This is an important and well thought out paper on a debatable subject, the argument of which is perhaps summed up in the sentence, "Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum," which appears on the cover. A short paper on the Coleoptera of the Scotch Fir came out in the Scottish Naturalist about this time. The Dascillidae of New Zealand was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History in July 1878; while work on the water-beetles was taken in hand for publication by the Royal Society of Dublin. Sharp and Fowler's Catalogue of the British Coleoptera appeared in 1893; the Rhynchophorous Coleoptera of Japan in 1896; the articles Insecta and Termites in the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1902; and an article on the Orders of Insects, a subject in which Sharp was much interested, in the Entomologist for 1909. The Distribution of Plants and Animals on the Globe (a paper read before the Dumfries Nat. Hist. Society in 1883); Stridulation in Ants, 1893; an Account of the Phasmidae, 1898; and the Grouse-fly, 1907, are away from his special order – Coleoptera; while A Scheme for a National System of Rest-Funds (or Pensions) for Working People (1892) shows that Sharp could detach himself from entomology when he wished to do so.
  Sharp's major papers included those on the Coleoptera of the Hawaiian Islands published by the Entomological Society of London in 1878, 1879 and 1880. These were followed in 1899 and 1908 by the Fauna Hawaiiensis brought out by the Royal Society. This was followed by his work on the Beetles of Central America, prepared chiefly from material collected by Frederick DuCane Godman and Osbert Salvin, and published in 1894 and later years in that monumental work known as the "Fauna Centrali-Americana". In 1895 appeared the first volume of the Insecta in the Cambridge Natural History, this being followed by the second volume in 1899. Of their influence on the advancement of entomology, and especially of our knowledge of insects as living things, too much cannot be said. The publication was so popular that it prevented him for producing a new edition incorporating improvements in the classification of the insects. He published on the topic in the Entomologist. In 1910 the Insecta was translated into Russian by N. Y. Kuznetsov. In 1912 the Entomological Society of London, with the assistance of the Royal Society, brought out as Part III of the Transactions The Comparative Anatomy of the Male Genital Tube in Coleoptera by Sharp & Muir, an exhaustive treatise of 166 pages, and 37 plates. All the beetle families were examined, and the results of numerous dissections are included in this highly influential work on the beetle families.
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caption: Sharp in 1909
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