OUR HYMENOPTERA. 27 



done. We must get together a collection of our own, arranged and 

 named, to which each private collector may go to compare and 

 name his specimens, with this object I have been working for some 

 years, and with the help of friends have gathered together about 500 

 species, which are roughly classified and a few of them named. 

 Alarge number have been sent to England and will soon return, 

 I hope, with their baptismal certificates : the rest are in a cabinet 

 in this room. What I ask for now is help — help in collecting speci- 

 mens and help in collecting facts. Specimens may be pinned, and 

 kept in corked boxes, like butterflies, or popped into spirits, or 

 put into a small bottle with dry sawdust (which typifies the classi- 

 fication). Facts to be of any value, must be accompanied by the' 

 insect to which they refer. What I should like most is to see many 

 of our members making collections for themselves, and I need not 

 say how glad I should be to give them any help in my power. One 

 department of the subject which I specially commend tolady mem*- 

 bers is the keeping and rearing of ants. Ant houses are easily 

 made, and Sir John Lubbock's well known book will give many 

 hints on the management of these pets. 



I will now ask your attention to a very sketchy account of the 

 classificatiou of the order of insects called Hymenoptera, which may 

 serve as pegs on which to hang a few notes about each principal 

 group. I am afraid yeu will find the subject dry : I cannot make it 

 otherwise ; but even the pegs on which we hang our clothes are dry. 



Insects, or the ' insecta,' as now recognised, are distinguished by 

 having in the perfect state only 2 antenna), only G legs, and the body 

 divided into 3 parte, viz., head, thorax and abdomen. 



As a rule the life history of an insect comprises four stages, viz., 1st) 

 the egg, 2nd the larva, 3rd the pupa, 4th the imago. These stages- 

 are sometimes very sharply distinct as in the butterflies, sometimes 

 indistinct, though traceable, as in the Grasshoppers, while sometimes- 

 they are completely lost as in the mysterious parthenogenesis of 

 the Aphidae. As a rule insects in the imago stage are winged, 

 but there are many exceptions to the rule of which the workers 

 among the ants and the domestic flea are familiar examples, the 

 latter too familiar. More than a century ago Linnaeus basing his 

 classification mainly on the character of the wings, divided the 

 insecta into 7 orders, viz.: — 



1. Coleoptera, or sheath-winged, i. c, Beetles. 



2. Newoptera 3 ov nerve-winged, i. e., Dragon flie3, white ants, &e. 



