OF WASHINGTON. 87 



the old orders, except the Neuroptera, seem to be mentioned. 

 In the writings of Moses, closely allied groups even are desig 

 nated by name, as in his reference to the gryllus, locusta, acheta, 

 and truxalis, which were each edible after their species.* Very 

 ancient records occur also in the old writings of the Chinese, etc., 

 but none of these incidental references approach in any sense a 

 scientific consideration of the subject. 



So far as we know, therefore, the first study of insects to 

 which any importance can be attached began with Aristotle, 

 over 300 years before Christ. Aristotle lived between 384 and 

 322 B. C., and his great work on the Natural History of Ani 

 mals was the first important attempt of which we have any 

 record at scientific study and classification of animals, including 

 insects, and was the great force and authority in zoological 

 writings until the middle of the iyth century. 



It may be worth while, therefore, to examine a little more 

 closely the ideas about insects held by this founder of the science 

 of natural history, using for our sources of information Pliny, 

 Reaumur, Lacordaire, and Kirby & Spence. Reaumur says of 

 Aristotle that what he himself saw and described is usually trust 

 worthy, but what was reported to him by other observers is often 

 fabulous and much distorted ;| and these same errors and fables 

 were repeatedly copied by writers on insects in the later centuries. 

 Aristotle seems to have referred in the various volumes of his 

 history of animals to some 47 insects only, and these are desig 

 nated merely generically. A classification in the modern sense 

 he had not, but he seems to have had a more precise idea 

 of the limits of the class Insecta than even Linne, and of the 

 modern orders he left the Coleoptera, Diptera, and Psychce 

 (Lepidoptera) practically as we know them. His other general 

 groups are more or less mixed. He appreciated the distinction 

 between biting and sucking insects and the intermediate position 

 held by the bees. He recognized the primary body divisions of 

 head, trunk, and abdomen, and seemed to have fairly correct 



*Lichtenstein. Trans. Linn. Soc. (1796), vol. II, p. 51. 



t Aristotle, it is reported, was very much assisted by Alexander the 

 Great, who furthered the studies of the former both with means and with 

 the assistance of collections of animals and observations on them obtained 

 through the agency of his armies. 



