Vlll PREFACE. 



Lest any of the readers of the Annual should complain 

 of our Plate this year being exclusively devoted to Lspi- 

 doptera, it is but fair to ourselves to state that some figures 

 of other orders would willingly have been introduced, but 

 those eniracred on the other orders were unable to recommend 

 any species for that purpose ; one correspondent, it is true, 

 did recommend one Beetle to be figured, but his recom- 

 mendation arrived just when the Plate was already com- 

 pleted ! 



Entomology is coming rapidly into notice as an attractive 

 branch of science; it is difficult to take up any work of our 

 greatest literary characters, without finding some allusion 

 either to Entomology or Entomological pursuits ; even in the 

 first number of "Little Dorrit," Mr. Meagles states in refer- 

 ence to his dread of the plague while in quarantine at Mar- 

 seilles, — " Why, I'd as soon have a spit* through me, and 

 be stuck upon a card in a collection of beetles, as lead the 

 life I have been leading here;" and Bulwer Lytton, in the 

 " Caxtons," devotes a whole chapter to the earwig, inform- 

 ing his readers that the insect which attracted his attention, 

 or rather distracted it, " was certainly larger than an earwig. 

 It might have been one of that genus, in the family of For- 

 Jiculidce, called Labidoura — monsters, whose antennae have 

 thirty joints ! There is a species of this creature in England, 



* The word spit is thoroughly Entomological, being employed to de- 

 signate great clumsy pins, such as should not be used ; but the Author 

 was in error in assuming that a beetle was first pinned, and then stuck on 

 a card — those that are pinned not being mounted on cards, and vice versa 

 — at least this is the case at the present day, but perhaps in Mr. 

 Meagles' time it may have been different 



