|g2 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



Avise inevitable confusions which would ensue if science were reduced 

 for her vocabulary to the popular names of each country and language ; 

 it would moreover, burden the student with the onerous duty to master 

 every language in which the science is written, even to its idioms. 



The derivation is necessarily very various. Simple as it no doubt 

 was with the ancients, who knew scientifically, }jerhaps, no insects at all, 

 and oftenest named them after familiar objects which they resembled, 

 in form or dress, as to precious stones or metals, or to animals; the ad- 

 jectives expressing their appearance, destructiveness, or beneficence ; 

 their forms also as above alluded to, suggested by superstitious dread, 

 their size, color, habits, and numbers. Later, as science assumed more 

 comprehensive proportions, when the number of known insect species 

 rose into thousands and tens of thousands, it drove the systematist into 

 many additional fields of knowledge ; even poetry had to become lender. 



By far the richest and most appropriate source for names, however, 

 are the characteristics of the whole insect, or its parts, as for instance, 

 of the feelers, mouth-parts, the wings and their veins, the feet and 

 their parts. Among such I would name de^^astator^ destructor, stimulea^ 

 bivittata, ^nftata, punctata, tridentata, cincrca, liiicola, i/iaculata, chrysomelas, 

 brevicornis, albifrons, albipennis, fulvipomis. 



Next are we indebted to Botany, especially in the category of specific 

 names, denoting generally the food-plant of the larvre, ?L'iq7{ercus, popu/i, 

 rohinia,jii;:^landis, saliA\/^isi\ fabiv. Next, to denote the resemblance the 

 insect may have to certain plants, or their ^a.x\.s—2L^ popii/ifolia guercifolia, 

 lanrifolia. 



Mineralogy has furnished its quota, and lastly. Mythology. In 

 names from the latter we can frequently trace a resemblance between the 

 insect or its appearance, and the representation or attribute of the par- 

 ticular fabulous being whose name it bears, for instance, Polyphemus, the 

 name of one of our large silkworm moths, obviously suggested by the 

 conspicuous dark eye-spot in the middle of each wing, suggestive of 

 course of the one eye in the middle of the Cyclops' forehead. Some are 

 doubtful and obscure in their meaning as applied to insects. Thus it is 

 difficult to account tor the application of the name Luna to the beautiful 

 green moth. Luna is both the name of the moon and the goddess of 

 the moon. 1 could ajjply that name to the insect, only for its resem- 

 blance when at rest, — against a dark background, to the appearance of 

 the moon, nearing her second quarter. 



Many however, are so utterly devoid in analogy as to the whole or 

 its parts, with beings whose name they bear, that the imagination of the 

 uninitiated is utterly baffled. Among these J could cite Prometheus, 



another large moth, Apollo, a beautiful butterfly from the Alps. Idalia, 

 Aphrodite, Paphia — aliases of Venus, Diana, and Cybele, all applied to 

 five different species of the argymus butterfly. 



Rather suggestive are Apollo above named ; Tityus, the name of a 

 giant, and applied to our largest beetle ; Erebus, the hell of the ancients, 

 the name of an immense dark moth. 



