INTRODUCTION. 17 



PTERA of Kirby. Latreille and most of the naturalists of the 

 continent of Europe still retain them in Neuroptera, to whicii 

 they seem properly to belong. 



Tlie Tlirips tribe consists of minute insects more closely 

 allied to Hemiptera than to any other order, but resembling, in 

 some respects, the Orthoptera also. It forms the little order 

 Thysanoptera of Haliday; but I propose to leave it, as La- 

 treille has done, among the Hemiptera. 



The English entomologists separate from Hemiptera the 

 cicadas or harvest-flies, lantern-flies, frog-hoppers, plant-lice, 

 bark-lice, &c., under the name of Homoptera ; but these insects 

 seem too nearly to resemble the true Hemiptera to warrant the 

 separation. 



Burmeister, a Prussian natmalist, has subdivided the Neu- 

 roptera into the orders Neuroptera and Dictyotoptera, the 

 latter to include the species which undergo only a partial 

 transformation. K Hemiptera is to be subdivided, as above 

 mentioned, then this division of Neuroptera will be justifiable 

 also. 



Objections have often been raised against the study of 

 natural history, and many persons have been discouraged from 

 attempting it, on account of the formidable array of scientific 

 names and terms which it presents to the beginner ; and some 

 men of mean and contracted minds have made themselves 

 merry at the expense of naturalists, and have sought to bring 

 the writings of the latter into contempt, because of the scientific 

 language and names they were obliged to employ. Entomo- 

 logy, or the science that treats of insects, abounds in such 

 names more than any other branch of natural history; for the 

 different kinds of insects very far outnumber the species in 

 every class of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. 

 It is owing to this excessive number of species, and to the 

 small size and unobtrusive character of many insects, that 

 comparatively very few have received any common names, 

 either in our own, or in other modern tongues ; and hence 

 most of those that have been described in works of natural 

 history, are known only by their scientific names. The latter 

 have the advantage over other names in being intelligible to 

 3 



