PREFACE. Xill 
are lurking troublesome drones and disgusting para- 
sites. 
Now, although we have a great number of learned 
men in our country who have distinguished them- 
selves in the different branches of Natural History, 
still few works have been published on the subject. 
Much credit is due to Professor Godman for his excel- 
lent work on American Mammalia, which has been 
augmented by the late publications of Audubon; also 
to Wilson, Lucien Bonaparte, and Audubon, who, in 
their splendid works, have minutely described the 
North American Birds; as well as to Professor Hol- 
brook for his work on North American Reptiles. 
Still, in spite of all this, we have no general work on 
North American Insects, except a few numbers of 
the American Entomology, by Thomas Say; Major 
Leconte’s Iconography of some genera of Butterflies; 
and Dr. Harris’s elaborate report on the injurious In- 
sects of Massachusetts. 
It is time that our people in general, and particu- 
larly our youth, should. be made acquainted with a 
class of animals which every where surréund us, day 
and night, and which furnish us amusement, food, col- 
oring substances, and medicines, in order that they 
may be able to distinguish the useful from the injuri- 
ous ones, the harmless from the noxious, and to dis- 
cover those which may furnish new articles for man- 
ufactures, commerce, and domestic industry. 
For these reasons I have yielded to the solicitations 
of numerous friends, and am about to lay before the 
North American public the fruits of my Entomolog- 
ical investigations, pursued for many years during my 
extensive travels in Europe, Asia, and on this Conti- 
