Francis Willughby and John Ray were at the forefront of the natural history of insects in the second half of the seventeenth century. Willughby in particular had a deep interest in insects' metamorphosis, behaviour and diversity, an interest that he passed on to his friend and mentor Ray. By examining Willughby's contributions to John Wilkins's
Essay towards a Real Character
(1668) and Ray's
Methodus insectorum
(1705) and
Historia insectorum
(1710), which contained substantial material from Willughby's manuscript history of insects, one may reconstruct how the two naturalists studied insects, their innovative use of metamorphosis in insect classification, and the sheer diversity of insect forms that they described on the basis of their own collections and those of London and Oxford virtuosi. Imperfect as it was,
Historia insectorum
was recognized by contemporaries as a significant contribution to the emerging field of entomology.
Turning wingbeat sounds into spectrum images for acoustic insect classification