ABSTRACT
This chapter is inspired by Erica Fudge's work on the history of the relationship of humans with other animals. By looking at entomology and its practitioners as well as the objects of their study in the last decades of the eighteenth century, the chapter expands current research on interspecies interaction. Its analysis of contemporary travel literature in conjunction with systematic natural history publications offers new insights into the representation and materiality of different species humans and insects in their interaction through one and the same historical process: the establishment of a novel field of scholarly interest, entomology. Late eighteenth-century entomology required specimens, instruments and the mobility of invertebrates and naturalists. The resulting encounter produced new forms of knowledge that came at a price in more than one sense. During the process of developing entomology as a science, collections and their specimens formed the arena from which the lay enthusiast and the scientist emerged.
