300 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



and beautifully illustrated accounts of numerous orders of 

 animals that a past generation did not even know existed. 



In spite of all these various studies, however, there are 

 groups of animals that seem to have escaped attention. 

 Such a group are the Woodlice or Terrestrial Isopoda. 

 Very little indeed is known of their life-history, habits, etc., 

 and even systematically we have yet much to learn respect- 

 ing the relationships between the different families, sub- 

 families, and genera. 



Seeing that many species are exceedingly plentiful and 

 have a world-wide distribution, this neglect is somewhat 

 difficult to account for, unless it be that their marine relatives 

 are so much more numerous and the terrestrial forms have 

 played the Cinderella of the group. Be this as it may, wood- 

 lice are exceedingly interesting in their habits, and apart 

 altogether from their great zoological interest are worthy of 

 close study. 



It is indeed surprising that animals of fair size and 

 occurring in almost every garden and greenhouse, cold- 

 frame, cellar, etc., in the United Kingdom should not have 

 attracted more attention. 



They are mentioned in many of the earlier works on 

 natural history, and so long ago as 1857 Kinahan gave a 

 valuable and interesting account of the species known to 

 him up to that date, whilst in 1859 Hogan recorded the 

 occurrence in ants' nests of a tiny, colourless species 

 {Platyarthrits Jioffmannseggii). Bate and Westwood in their 

 History of the British Sessile-eyed Crustacea in 1 868 gave a 

 very detailed account of these animals, with excellent figures, 

 and since then numerous writers have recorded species new 

 to our fauna or new to science. In few of these accounts, 

 however, is there any reference to the habits and life-histories 

 of the different species. 



The naming of the species and the classification of them 

 must always play an important part in the study of any 

 group of animals, but it should not be regarded as an end, 

 but rather as a means to an end. The life-history, the 

 habits, the structure and general bionomics are the really 

 fascinating subjects that attract us to the study of animal 



