Of True Bugs in General. 75 



were crying again, but this time there were no smiles 

 under their tears. There was one man in our town that 

 said, ' Good ! Good ! Served the old devil right ! Ought 

 to have been done long ago." They w r ent after that man 

 with a rope, and he caught the train just in time. And 

 when I asked my father why all the bell? tolled so sadly 

 and so long he said it was because Lincoln was dead. 

 Lincoln was dead ! He sighed to say it. 



That was long and long ago, and many prejudices and 

 animosities I once had have long since faded away, but I 

 cannot pass off everything with a smile. I was a little 

 boy in gingham aprons when I heard those bells tolling 

 so sadly #nd so long because Lincoln was dead, but even 

 so, the grown man cannot endure to hear that sacred 

 name applied to vermin. It is a kind of humor that does 

 not appeal to me. I have only heard say it wa-s thus 

 applied. I hope it isn't so. 



But here I am again c'ean out of the furrow, and I 

 meant only to show how familiar names for insects vary 

 in different parts of the country. Much more, then, do 

 they vary in different quarters of the globe where the 

 people speak English. Also the English names would 

 not be intelligible to a German or a Frenchman, but the 

 dead languages, being dead, change not, and serve a useful 

 purpose in giving names that will be everywhere under- 

 stood by scientific men. 



I shall use them sparingly, and what classification I use 

 shall be of the least possible. I have so far written of 

 flies, mosquitoes, and fleas. Flies and mosquitoes are 

 members of the great order of Diptera. They have one 

 pair of wings. Though fleas are generally put into a 

 separate stall with the name over it of Siphonaptera, 

 because they have a sucking mouth (siphon), though not 

 a sucking stomach, and are lacking (a) in wings (ptera), 



