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A guide to the arrangement of British insects is a seminal work of entomology. A monumental piece of work with over 10,000 insect names it was intended for the author's own use, but pressure for publication grew until it appeared in 1829. Uniquely for its time, all insect orders were included. A second was published in 1837.
Six pages of introductory matter are followed by 282 columns of insect names in two columns per page systematically arranged and followed by an index to genera. This work attributed to John Curtis was in fact co-authored by James Charles Dale, Francis Walker and Alexander Henry Haliday; Haliday and Walker writing almost the whole of the sections on Diptera and parasitic Hymenoptera. The list contains 1500 generic and 15,000 specific names. Ireland and Britain are not separated.
The full title is A guide to the arrangement of British insects being a catalogue of all the named species hitherto discovered in Great Britain and Ireland. The Guide had five purposes for entomologists
their desiderata will be shown ; and this the Author is persuaded will enable Students to enrich their Cabinets by mutual exchanges to an extent which could not be accomplished by any other means.
The Guide was the subject of a celebrated quarrel between James Francis Stephens and John Curtis s:Quarrel between James Francis Stephens and John Curtis