492 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF INSECTS. 
food by snctionov mastication: in the carnivorous ones, the 
suckers to the masticators in Britain are nearly as 1:6; 
but with respect to the phytiphagoiis tribe you must take 
into consideration that some insects imbibing their food 
by suction in their perfect state (as the great body of the 
Lepidoptcra), masticate it when they are larva : deducting 
therefore from both sides the insects thus circumstanced, 
the masticators will form about three fourths of the re- 
maining British thalerophagous insects. Another cir- 
cumstance belonging to this head must not be passed 
without notice: — there are certain insects feeding upon 
liquid food that do not suck, but lap it. This is the case 
with the Hymcnoptera, who, though they are mandibulate, 
generally lap their food (the nectar of flowers) with their 
tongue, and may be called lambent insects : nor is this 
practice confined to that order, but all the mandibulate 
insects that feed on that substance merit the same appel- 
lation. The absorption of this nectar is so important a 
point in the economy of nature, that a very large propor- 
tion of the insect population of the globe in their perfect 
state, are devoted to it. Considerably more than half 
the species indigenous to Britain fulfill this function, 
and probably in tropical countries the proportion may 
be still larger. 
To push this analysis still further — Amongst our car- 
nivorous thalerophaga, aphidivorous insects are about as 
1 : 1 4- ; and amongst the phytiphagoiis, the fungivorous 
ones form about a twentieth ,• and the granivorous about 
a twenty-fifth part of the whole. Again : in the sapro- 
phaga the lignivorous tribes form more than half, and 
the coprophagous ones more than a third. 
If you wish to know further the relative proportions 
