60 Mr. J. O. Westwood's Notes on the 



VII. Notes on the Wing Veins of Insects. By J. O. 

 Westwood, Esq., F.L.S. 



[Read June 2, 1856.] 



It cannot but have been observed by persons who have taken the 

 trouble to watch the progress of Entomological science during the 

 past quarter of a century, that there has grown up a very constant 

 practice, where difficulties of a physiological kind have arisen with 

 reference to the structures or uses of particular organs of the in- 

 sect world, of assuming that we ;ire in the necessary inability to 

 determine the question, because the general construction of these 

 tribes of animals is so very different from that of ourselves and 

 other vertebrated tribes. This kind of reasoning appears to me, 

 however, in many cases to be only a plea for ignorance, carelessness 

 of investigation or sluggishnessof mind in reasoning upon the facts 

 which our own researches, or those of previous authors, have re- 

 vealed. That insects have no orifices in the head which we can 

 assign definitely to those of the ears or nose of the higher animals, 

 is no reason why insects should not hear or smell ; but that with 

 elaborately furnished mouths and digestive apparatus, delicate in- 

 struments of touch, wonderfully-constructed eyes, most powerful 

 muscles, and a singular system of circulation, we should affirm that 

 we cannot understand the physiology of the senses of taste, touch 

 and sight, or the proceses of motion or circulation, appears to me 

 to be unworthy of the advanced state of physiological science in the 

 present day. A paper entitled a " Memorandum on the Wing Rays 

 of Insects," by Mr, Newman, has been recently published in our 

 Transactions, Vol. III. N. S. p. 225, so full of what appears to me 

 to be false deductions, and in which the differences between exosteate 

 and endosteate animals is so strongly insisted upon, that I must 

 take leave to trouble the Society with a few notes on tlie subject. 

 After remarking upon the necessity of some one rising to take 

 up the mantle of George Newport, and upon the great assistance 

 which the nervures, veins, ribs, rays or bones of the wings of in- 

 sects afford in enabling us to distinguish species, genera, and even 

 families from each other, Mr. Newman believes he is correct in 

 saying that we make no attempt to ascertain their use, or to learn 



