238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



similar habits at all stages of growth, an insect, with its three 

 separate stages of larva, pupa and adult, leads as it were 

 three separate lives, with different surroundings, and in each 

 of those stages may be regarded as so many different animals. 

 Then it is often extremely difficult to ascertain to what beetle 

 or moth or bee such and such a grub or caterpillar belongs. 

 Our entomoloarists are not numerous enous-h, and often from 

 their time being taken up with the pursuit of their profession, 

 usually not that of science, are unable to spend the time in 

 the field to observe the habits of insects for themselves. Un- 

 fortunately, also, so backward is the science of entomology 

 in this country, that the attention of its students is at present 

 fully engrossed with classifying and describing the adult 

 insects. When it is to be borne in mind that there are within 

 the limits of the United States, probably at a low estimate, 

 ten thousand (10,000) species of Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, 

 ichneumon flies, saw-flies, &c.), half as many butterflies and 

 moths, about ten thousand species of flies, as many of beetles 

 and of bugs (Hemiptera), — Mr. Uhler, our authority on this 

 group assures me this is a fair estimate of their number, — and 

 several thousand species of grasshoppers, &c. (Or'thoptera), 

 and neuropterous insects, such as dragon-flies, caddis-flies, 

 &c., &c., the whole amounting to upwards of fifty thousand 

 species of insects, to say nothing of the spiders, mites and 

 ticks, centipedes and millepedes, it is evident that in the 

 mere preliminary work of identifjdng and properly describing 

 these myriad forms — an intellectual work requiring as much 

 good sense, discretion and knowledge as shown in the pur- 

 suit of medicine, the law or education, — that all this work, 

 which is simply preliminary in its nature, is a vast one, 

 and that the combined exertions of many minds over several 

 generations will not exhaust the subject. As it is, there are 

 in this country only about thirty entomologists who publish 

 anything relating to insects. Necessary as it is, this work of 

 classification is by no means the highest and most useful 

 branch of physical science. He who studies carefully the 

 habits and structure of one insect, and if injurious to agricult- 

 ure lays before the farmer and gardener a true story of its 

 mode of life, is a true benefactor to agriculture, and at the 

 same time benefits science more than he who describes hun- 



