TAXONOMY. 



Clearly some system of filing is necessary 



The System . i i r 



in order to keep track or the hundreds 01 



thousands of insect names. A business man keeps his 

 reference cards or letters in groups and sub-groups. As 

 Jiis business grows he not only adds new groups but he 

 breaks up the old groups into finer divisions. It is the 

 same way with the arrangement (taxonomy) of insects. 

 Formerly nine major groups ("Orders") were enough for 

 insects, the "Class" of animals with six legs. The latest 

 works divide insects into several Classes and there are 

 nearly forty Orders. Not to make it too complicated, we 

 will follow a moderate course and consider all insects as 

 belonging to one Class, which is divided into about two 

 dozen Orders. Flies, in the strict sense, have no more 

 than two wings and belong to the "two- winged" Order 

 (Diptera); the Order to which butterflies and moths 

 belong is Lepidoptera; that to which beetles belong is 

 Coleoptera; and so on. Orders are divided into "sub- 

 orders" and these into "families." Lady-bird beetles 

 belong to the family Coccinelidse, while carpet beetles are 

 Dermestidas. Family names always end in dae and sub- 

 family names in nag. The next division which need 

 concern us is "genus"; and then "species." The names 

 of these divisions are the ones ordinarily used. The 

 generic name should always be written with a capital and 

 the specific with a small initial letter; they are usually 

 printed in italics. Bumble-bees are Bombus; a common 

 species is Bombus pennsylvanicus. Some species have 

 varieties; for example: one of our beautiful butterflies is 

 Papilio glaucus variety turnus. This system is more 

 than a pure matter of convenience; it aims to point out 

 relationships. The species of a given genus are supposed 

 to be more closely related to each other than they are to 

 the species of other genera of the same family, and the 

 different genera of a given family are believed to be more 

 closely related to each other than to those of other families 

 of the same order and so on. 



The technical entomologist will notice that the arrange- 

 ment of our text does not follow absolutely any one of the 

 arrangements with which he is familiar. This liberty was 

 taken because it was believed that certain deviations would 



