FROM AN EGG TO AN INSECT 



By R. E. Snodgrass 

 Bureau of Entomolo{/y, United States Department of Agriculture 



INTRODUCTION 



It is perhaps an inheritance from more primitive clays that we 

 are so prone to estimate value by size, and that we hold small things 

 in contempt. Though we have learned full well from science that 

 the most minute of living creatures may be vastly important or 

 inimical to our welfare, we still persist somewhat in belittling the 

 study of them. Especially is this true if the creature is an insect. 

 Yet, the study of insects has contributed much to our knowledge of 

 the general principles of life, and in particular to an understanding 

 of certain phases of reproduction and heredity. This, because the 

 fundamentals of life are the same for all living things, ourselves in- 

 cluded, and because some life processes have been found more easily 

 studied in insects and other lower forms of animals than in the 

 more complex ones. 



The microscope, however, makes the flea the equal of the dog, and 

 on the printed page the discrepancy between the large and the small 

 disappears, for the description of one may require just as many words 

 as that of the other— and, we might add, words of equal size. 

 Words ! Words are the curse of scientific writing ; but it should be 

 recognized that any description is likely to be far more complicated 

 rhan the thing described. If the object could be seen or pictured 

 directly instead of being portrayed in words, how much simpler and 

 clearer it might appear! We can not all, however, be students of 

 nature at first hand, and it becomes a part of the business of the 

 scientist to present his information to the public, or to such part of 

 the public as is interested, and this he can do fully only through the 

 medium of language. The true scientist, however, is usually so fear- 

 ful of saying something that might possibly in some way be mis- 

 construed by technical critics that he puts his statements in the 

 terms adopted and defined by his particular branch of science. As 

 a consequence, scientific vocabularies, w^hile becoming more and more 

 concise to specialists, are becoming less and less euphonic and 

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