THE PINE DESTROYER. 



217 



it is in my power to avert ; and for this reason, I feel not only 

 justified in pursuing such studies into the laws of life, but urged 

 thereto. Nor is this all. No single creature, whose life-history 

 we can trace, will pass through the hands and under the eye 

 of the intelligent observer, without teaching him many an interest- 

 ing and profound lesson. Beauty and delicacy of design and 

 workmanship ; marvellous adaptations of organs to uses, of means 

 to ends ; wise provisions for balancing the forces of nature ; 

 beautiful play between vegetable and animal life, these are a few 

 of the more obvious lessons which the study of biology teaches us. 

 I place this humble contribution to the sum of human know- 

 ledge before our readers, in the hope that it may prove a stimulus 

 and an encouragement to all who have a little leisure to follow out 

 some similar course of original research for themselves ; assured 

 that nothing is more healthful or pleasant either for body or mine". 



Literature. 

 It is to be feared that the practical student of this subject will 

 find little in the English language to help him. The early 

 authorities on insects were all foreigners, and wrote in Latin 

 French, or German. The first English study of the subject with 

 which I am familiar is by Curtis, in his now rare and costly work 

 on British Entomology^ where we find (Vol. III., pi. 104) a plate 

 and two pages of letter-press describing the insect and its method 

 of working, but no reference to its immature stages of develop- 

 ment. In the volume on Beetles in The Naturalists' Library not 

 a word is said about any of the species of Hylurgus under any 

 of their synonyms, and until 1868 their life-history was practically 

 unknown. After Dr. Chapman's researches more attention was 

 paid to injurious insects, and in 1879 Miss Ormerod gave some 

 account of our beetle in her "Report of Observations on Injurious 

 Insects," which was followed in 1881 by her valuable " Manual of 

 Injurious Insects," where we have a considerable amount of 

 information. Figures of the insect occur in Curtis, in Miss 

 Ormerod's Manual, and in Figuier's " Insect World." Among 

 foreign works we may mention the Systema NaturcE, of Linnaeus, 

 2,562,9 ; Fabricius' E7it. Syst., Vol. i., p. 2, page 367, n. 17 ; 

 Mars. Ent. Br., 57, 18. 



Journal of Microscopy and Natural Science. 



New Series. Vol. III. 1890. Q 



