8 



minute creatures are known to science, they are all named, 

 their various tribes are registered in our annals of Natural 

 History, and when I tell you that amid the myriad little 

 beings that hum through the air each year adds but little 

 to our general knowledge, so energetic has been the pur- 

 suit, so accurate the observation, so extensive the research, 

 yon will no doubt feel great surprise, and still more that so 

 much knowledge should have been collected and yet so 

 little diffused among the general public. 



I cannot picture or imagine to myself any one thing in 

 creation more astounding or more wonderful (where ali is 

 truly marvellous and beautiful), than the progressive de- 

 velopments of insect life, or a subject that affords a more 

 unmixed and pleasurable delight to the scientific student or 

 passing gleaner. 



Before, however, I enter into the subject of this day's 

 paper, I think it right to mention that the chief object of 

 onr society is not so much to have rare and subtle points of 

 vital existence and vital phenomena brought before its 

 notice for discussion, but rather, looking to the general and 

 popular features of our gatherings, to consider it as a 

 stepping stone for beginners, receiving into its ranks the 

 earliest aspirants for nature's knowledge, assisting them by 

 simple and practical lessons, given under circumstances the 

 most advantageous, and at times, like the present, the most 

 agreeable. This, therefore, must be my apology for ad- 

 dressing you in a very elementary strain for the sake of 

 those young naturalists, those youthful travellers along the 

 intricate and ever varying, ever captivating path of God's 

 most beautiful creation. 



These immense swarms of destructive insects that seem 

 to come into the world merely for our personal annovance 

 are the offsprings of insects of the past season ; the' eggs 

 from which these creatures were hatched were laid by a 

 careful instinct, as it is called, of the anxious parent during 

 the previous year ; and it is only those who have witnessed 

 the solicitude displayed by many insects during this 



