INTRODUCTION. 11 



to our experience, it is exceedingly difficult for persons 

 arrived at manhood to acquire this power of discrimination ; 

 but, in early life, a little care on the part of the parent or 

 teacher will render it comparatively easy. In this study 

 the knowledge of things should go along with that of 

 words. " If names perish," says Linnaeus, "the knowledge 

 of things perishes also :"* and, without names, how can 

 any one communicate to another the knowledge he has 

 acquired relative to any particular fact, either of physio- 

 logy, habit, utility, or locality ? On the other hand, mere 

 catalogue learning is as much to be rejected as the loose 

 generalizations of the despisers of classification and nomen- 

 clature. To name a plant, or an insect, or a bird, or a 

 quadruped rightly, is one step towards an accurate know^- 

 ledge of it ; but it is not the knowledge itself. It is the 

 means, and not the end, in natural history, as in every 

 other science. 



If the bias of opening curiosity be properly directed, 

 there is not any branch of natural history- so fascinating to 

 youth as the study of insects. It is, indeed, a common 

 practice in many families to teach children, from their 

 earliest infancy, to treat the greater number of insects as if 

 they were venomous and dangerous, and, of course, meriting 

 to be destroyed, or at least avoided with horror. Associ- 

 ations are by this means linked with the very appearance 

 of insects, which become gradually more inveterate with 

 advancing years; provided, as most frequently happens, 

 the same system be persisted in, of avoiding or destroying 

 almost every insect which is unlucky enough to attract 

 observation. How much rational amusement and innocent 

 pleasure is thus thoughtlessly lost; and how many dis- 

 agreeable feelings are thus created, in the most absurd 

 manner ! "In order to show that the study or (if the word 

 be disliked) the observation of insects is peculiarly fasci- 

 nating to children, even in their early infancy, we may refer 

 to what we have seen in the family of a friend, who is 

 partial to this, as well as to all the departments of natural 

 history. Our friend's children, a boy and girl, were taught, 

 * Nomina si pereant, pcrit et cognitio reniin. 



