TRANSACTIONS 



ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



LONDON. 



I. Observations on a Mode practised in Italy of excluding 

 the Common House-fly from Aj}artments. By William 

 Spence, Esq.^ F.R.S., ^'c, Honorary Member of the 

 Entomological Society. 



[Read April 7, 1834.] 



J- HE habits, manners and instincts of insects, their anatomy and 

 physiology, and their useful or noxious properties, will doubtless 

 attract a large share of the attention of the members of the Entomo- 

 logical Society, without inducing them to underrate, as has some- 

 times been done, the importance of the systematic department of the 

 science, on which all accurate information respecting its objects must 

 be founded. Knowledge as to the structure, habits and oeconomy of 

 insects ought, indeed, to be the grand and ultimate aim of entomo- 

 logy ; but this knowledge can be neither acquired nor diffused with- 

 out systematic classification, which is the dictionary that must enable 

 us duly to read the great book of nature, and to which, therefore, 

 so long as that dictionary still remains so incomplete, even the largest 

 portion of the entomologist's labours may be justly given, while, at 

 the same time, no fact, however trifling, relating to the habits and 

 oeconomy of the objects of his study is suffered to be lost, the two 

 great branches of the science, system and the natural history of in- 

 sects (taken in its largest sense), being made to go hand in hand, and 

 mutually to support each other. 



To one department of the natural history of insects, which has 



