The Wings of Insects. An Exposition of the Uniform Terminology of the Wing-Veins of Insects and a Discussion of the More General Characteristics of the Wings of the Several Orders of Insects

Ithaca: The Comstock Publishing Co., 1918. First edition.

SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY OF CO-AUTHOR OF THE COMSTOCK-NEEDHAM SYSTEM INSCRIBED TO HIS CLOSE FRIEND, CORNELL NEUROANATOMIST BURT WILDER.

17.5x25.5 cm hardcover, green cloth binding, gilt title to cover gilt with gilt spider web , gilt black spine label, bookplate of N.S.R. Maluf to front paste-down, frontispiece plate of insect wing, ink inscription top of title page, "Dr. Burt G. Wilder/ with the affectionate regards of/ J. H. Comstock",i-xviii, 430 pp, 420 figures in text. Light browning of page edges, very good in custom archival mylar cover.

JOHN HENRY COMSTOCK (1849-1931) was an eminent researcher in entomology and arachnology and a leading educator. His work provided the basis for classification of butterflies, moths, and scale insects. He became a professor of Nature Studies at Cornell. In 1882 he became professor of Entomology and Invertebrate Zoology at Cornell. He is best known as the co-proposer of the Comstock-Needham system with James George Needham, a naming system for insect wing veins. It was an important step in showing the homology of all insect wings [Comstock, J.H. & Needham, J.G. (1898) The wings of Insects. IX The Venation of the Wings of Hymenoptera. The American Naturalist, 32:413-424].

PROVENANCE: BURT GREEN WILDER (1841 - 1925) was an American comparative anatomist. During part of the Civil War he served as surgeon of the Fifty-fifth (Negro) Massachusetts Infantry. From 1867 to his retirement in 1910 he was professor of neurology and vertebrate zoölogy at Cornell. In 1885 he was president of the American Neurological Association and in 1898 of the Association of American Anatomists. He was a close friend of Comstock, who wrote in his obituary in Science May 22, 1925: "Dr. Wilder enjoyed the instruction and friendship of the great teachers Asa Gray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jeffries Wyman and Louis Agassiz. From 1866 to 1868 he was assistant in comparative anatomy in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, working under the direction of Louis Agassiz. In 1868 Dr. Wilder became a member of the first faculty of Cornell University as professor of comparative anatomy and zoology. For many years Dr. Wilder had no private laboratory, but pursued his investigations at a table in the general laboratory, where he was a constant inspiration to the students working there. In the earlier years Dr. Wilder devoted his attention to various zoological problems; but later he gave most of his time to a study of the morphology of the brain, and to a simplified terminology of the parts of the brain. He prepared nearly two thousand vertebrate brains, many of which are human, including thirteen from educated persons. This collection is now at Cornell University."