VI PREFACE. 



effort was made to make them repulsive by rendering them 

 scientific. " There can oe no doubt that the absence of 

 attractive works on Entomology was the reason why Ento- 

 mology itself was so generally neglected amongst us. Con- 

 vinced that this was the chief obstacle to the spread of 

 Entomology in Britain," Messrs. Kirby and Spence " resolved 

 to do what was in their power to remove it, and to intro- 

 duce to their countrymen a mine of pleasure, new, boundless 

 and inexhaustible, and which, to judge from their own expe- 

 rience — formed in no contracted field of comparison — they 

 can recommend as possessing advantages and attractions 

 equal to those held forth by most other branches of human 

 learning." And they succeeded : the study of insects, once 

 deemed ridiculous, has ceased to be so, because it has 

 become ennobled by its cultivators. Rarely indeed have 

 two such men as William Kirby and William Spence joined 

 hand and hand in a task of such pure and unselfish labour, 

 and still more rarely has such labour been crowned with so 

 decided a success. To this success alone is to be attributed 

 the popularity of a science, which in the hands of a Marsham 

 or a Haworth was very scientific, very precise, very philo- 

 sophical, but — shall I write it— very unattractive. 



When Kirby and Spence commenced their task the students 

 of Entomology were few and far between, — one in Norfolk, 

 another at Hull, half-a-dozen in London. Now there are 

 collectors in every town, and the 'Entomologist' wends its 

 way once a month into almost every hamlet in the United 

 Kingdom. 



To myself, who have always made that particular branch 

 of the science my chief delight, it is a source of inexpressible 



