A Guide to the Arrangement of British Insects

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.

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 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.

According to the preface, the Guide had five purposes for entomologists: The Guide was the subject of a celebrated quarrel between James Francis Stephens and John Curtis.