Johann Franz Christian Heyer, town officer from Lueneburg (1777-1864) and his insect collection.

A biography of Johann Franz Christian Heyer (13. 8. 1777 to 8. 1. 1864) a town-officer of Lueneburg and celebrated collector of Insects is given. He has discovered rare insect species not only new for the fauna of the surrounding country of his domicile or Germany but also new for the science. He committed these to scientific entomologists (Toussaint de Charpentier Ernst Friedrich Germar Julius Theodor Christian Ratzeburg) for description and publication. The most important species were Nehalennia speciosa (Charpentier) (Odonata), Chrysochraon dispar (Germar) (Saltatoria, Caelifera), Orgya ericae (Germar), and Xylina lamda zinckenii (Treitschke) (Lepidoptera). His friend Friedrich Wilhelm Reisig Saxesen, a painter and teacher of natural history in the school for forest-keepers in Clausthal has dedicated to him a new rare species of the Harz mountains Ctenicera heyeri (Coleoptera, Elateridae). In the remains of Heyer's collections (now in Zoological Museum of Hamburg University) are perhaps original species of Brasilian cicades described by Germar (1821-1835).