OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 61 



is it made known when a system of the science exists ! If the insect be 

 already described, he has but to mention its generic and trivial names, and 

 by aid of two words alone, every entomologist, though in the most distant 

 region — whether a Swede, a German, or a Frenchman — whether a native 

 of Europe, of Asia, of America, or of Africa, knows instantly the very 

 species that is meant, and can that moment ascertain whether it be within 

 his reach. If the species be new and undescribed, it is only necessary to 

 indicate the genus to which it belongs, the species to which it is most nearly 

 allied, and to describe it in scientific terms, which may be done in few 

 words, and it can at once be recognized by every one acquainted with the 

 science. 



You will think it hardly credible that there should be so much difficulty 

 in describing an insect intelligibly without the aid of system ; but an argu- 

 mentum ad hominem, supported by some other facts, will, 1 conjecture, 

 render this matter more comprehensible. You have doubtless, like every 

 one else, in the showery days of summer, felt no little rage at the Jlies, 

 which at such times take the liberty of biting our legs, and contrive to 

 make a comfortable meal through the interstices of their silken or cotton 

 coverings. Did it, I pray, ever enter into your conception that these 

 bloodthirsty tormentors are a different species from those flies which you 

 are wont to see extending the lips of their little proboscis to a piece of 

 sugar or a drop of wine ? I dare say not. But the next time you have 

 sacrificed one of the former to your just vengeance catch one of the latter 

 and compare them. 1 question if, after the narrowest comparison, you 

 will not still venture a wager that they are the very same species. Yet 

 you would most certainly lose your bet. They are not even of the same 

 genus — one belonging to the genus Musca (M. domestical, and the other 

 to the genus Stomoxys (tS". calcitrans) ; and on a second examination you 

 will find that, however alike in most respects, they differ widely in the 

 shape of their proboscis ; that of the Stomoxys being a horny sharp-pointed 

 weapon, capable of piercing the flesh, while the soft blunt organ of the 

 Musca is perfectly incompetent to any such operation. In future, while 

 you no longer load the whole race of the house-fly with the execrations 

 which properly belong to a quite different tribe, you will cease being 

 surprised that an ordinary description should be insufficient to discriminate 

 an insect. It is to tiiis insufficiency that we must attribute our ignorance 

 of so many of the insects mentioned by the older naturalists, previously to 

 the systematic improvements of the immortal Linne : and to the same 

 cause we must refer the impossibility of determining what species are 

 alluded to in the accounts of many modern travelers and agriculturists who 

 have been ignorant of Entomology as a science. Instances without num- 

 ber of this impossibility might be adduced, but I shall confine myself 

 to two. 



One of the greatest pests of Surinam, and other low regions in South 

 America, is the insect called in the West Indies, where it is also trouble- 

 some, the chigoe (Pulex penetrans), a minute species, to the attacks of 

 which I shall again have occasion to advert. This insect is mentioned by 

 almost all the writers on the countries where it is found. Not less than 

 eight or ten of them have endeavored to give a full description of it, and 

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