232 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly August 



overlooked ; these are the Anoplura or lice, and the 

 Thysanoptera or Physopoda, commonly called Thrips. 

 My own knowledge is of the vaguest description regarding 

 these specialised insects ; those of the former group are, of 

 course, often of the most repulsive habits, but this should 

 be no excuse among scientists for omitting to study them — 

 especially as the London Board Schools are said to be 

 " capital " collecting ground ! I am not aware that we 

 have been given any standard work upon the subject since 

 the appearance in 1842 of Henry Denny's Monographia 

 Anoplurorum Britannia?, to which the authorities in the 

 British Museum referred when I carried them a hawk louse 

 last year. In even worse plight are the Thysanoptera, for 

 I ^annot remember a single mention of them, excluding 

 purely systematic works, except the few instanced as 

 injurious to cereals in John Curtis' Farm Insects of i860. 



The Neuroptera, but for two reasons, might be placed 

 among our best known Orders, thanks mainly to Robert 

 M'Lachlan, than whom no living entomologist, perhaps, 

 has done more for the furtherance of the science. In the 

 first place, the majority of systematists are agreed in in- 

 cluding under this head a great and heterogeneous mass 

 of insects ; while, on the other hand, some (as Miall in 

 1902) regard this mass as constituting five distinct Orders 

 in both the Hemimetabolic and Holometabolic divisions. 

 Viewed as a whole, we have a good, though somewhat out 

 of date, catalogue of the Neuroptera, 1 which, however, does 

 not include those anomalous insects the silver fish and 

 spring tails, known as Collembola and Thysanura. 

 Nothing whatever was known of these curious creatures 

 till the publication in 1873 of Lord Avebury's Monograph 

 by the Ray Society. In it he enumerates sixty British 

 species ; but even now little attention is paid to the group, 

 members of which are among our most abundant insects, 

 and (I believe) but very little knowledge of our indigenous 

 species has been added to that therein set forth. 



From this superficial resume it will be seen how very 



1 A Catalogue of British Neuroptera, by Robert M'Lachlan, F. R.S., and 

 Rev. A. E. Eaton, M.A., F.E.S., published by the Entomological Society, 

 1870. 



