(224 ) (April, 
VI. MODERN ENTOMOLOGY.* 
a EN NTOMOLOGY is, of all sciences, the least fashionable. 
2 Insects, indeed, form what may be called the round 
number of the animal world, all other tribes constitu- 
ting a mere fractional overplus. They display the most 
wonderful variety of structure and development. They offer 
excellent opportunities for studying the origin, the mutations, 
and the geographical distribution “of species. They present 
the most striking examples of the singular phenomenon of 
mimetism. her transformations, chen architecture, their 
intelligence, and their social institutions, are themes practi- 
cally exhaustless. Among their ranks are included our most 
formidable enemies—beings far more difficult to deal with 
than the’wolf or the tiger. For all this, few works on the 
natural history of insects make their appearance—fewer, we 
believe, now than was the case thirty years ago. Of these 
few, a large proportion are little more than compilations and 
manuals, chiefly of British species—to which a large part of 
our entomologists limit their attention in a spirit possibly 
patriotic, but certainly unphilosophical. 
Another besetting sin of English lovers of inseéts—indeed, 
of English naturalists in general—is a proneness to teleology. 
We have heard it maintained abroad that a work on the 
organic sciences, free from all reference to final causes, was 
as rare in England as ‘“‘ unfortified” wine. It is curious 
how completely the old proverb, “‘ It’s an ill wind that blows 
nobody good,” decomposes such speculations. Let us take 
the following passage from one of the works before us:— 
“ The first inseét of which travellers unite in complaining is 
the hated and dreaded mosquito. In its perfect or winged 
state it is about as annoying a creature as can be, but then 
it must be remembered that the traveller is but a casual 
intruder in the natural domain of the mosquito, and must 
expect the consequences of his intrusion. Devouring 
travellers is not the normal occupation of the mosquito; 
for hundreds of successive generations of them may live and 
die, and not one of them ever see a human being. Their 
real object is a beneficent one. In their larval state they 
live in the water, and feed upon the tiny particles of decaying 
* Insects Abroad: being a Popular Account of Foreign Inseés, their 
Strudure, Habits, and Transformation, By the Rev. J. G. Woop, M.A., 
F.L.S., &c. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 
On British Wild Flowers considered in Relation to Inseés. By Sir 
J. Lussock, Bart., F.R,S., M.P., &, London: Macmillan and Co, 
