JOHN GOEDART.
This distinguished naturalist was born at Middleburg in Holland, in 1620. He was a sedulous observer of the nature and properties of insects, which he examined with admirable patience and sagacity. His work, which was written in Dutch, was published at Middleburg in 1662, with the title Descriptions of the Origin, Species, Qualities, and Metamorphoses of Worms, Caterpillars, &c. Being a painter by profession, he adorned it with very accurate coloured engravings. The treatise was also printed in Latin and French translations. The former bore this title:—Metamorphosis et Historia Naturalis Insectorum, cum Commentario Jo. de Mey et duplici cjusd. Appendice, una de Hemerobiis, altera de Natura Cometarum. An improved edition, in the English language, was published by Lister in 1682; and another, in Latin, in which the species were methodically disposed, appeared in 1685, under the care of the same naturalist, who had the work reprinted a third time as an appendix to his Historia Animalium Angliæ. Goedart describes 150 different species, and may be considered as the first who subjected the metamorphoses of insects to accurate examination. He died in 1668.