b THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF 



the intestial heat of many large animals, reveling in the horse's 

 stomach, in a bath of chyme of 102° Fahr., or in the bowels of man, 

 in an equally high temperature. Some have even been supposed to 

 feed on minerals, and, not to dwell upon Barchewitz's tale of East 

 India ants, which eat iron, certain it is that the larvae of our May flies 

 (Ephemera?) do eat earth, and I have known the larvae of the common 

 May Beetle to feed for three months upon nothing but pure soil; but 

 in both these cases the insects undoubtedly derive nourishment from 

 the vegetable matter which is extracted from the earth by the action 

 of the stomach. 



These facts will serve to show that, seek where we may, 

 we cannot find a place or a substance in which or on which, 

 some insect does not feed. They people the atmosphere around us, 

 swim at ease in the water, and penetrate the solid earth beneath our 

 feet; while some of them inhabit indifferently all three of these ele- 

 ments at different epochs of their lives. 



Now when we reflect that there are at least half a million — if not 

 a full million— distinct species of insects in this sublunary world of 

 ours, and that their habits and habitations are so diversified, it would 

 really seem as though entomology was a subject too vast for any one 

 man to shoulder; and indeed it is in all conscience extensive enough. 

 The science of entomology is, however, so perfect in itself, and its 

 classification so beautiful and simple that a particular species is re- 

 ferred to its Order, its Family, its Genus, and finally separated from 

 the other species of that genus, with the greatest ease, and with a 

 feeling of true satisfaction and triumph, by those who have mastered 

 the rudiments of the science. And, very fortunately, it is not neces- 

 sary for the practical fruit-grower to enter into the minutiae of species 

 or even of genera in order to learn the habits of the insects which in- 

 terest him in one way or another. These minutiae must be left to the 

 professed entomologist. 



There is not an insect on the face of the globe which cannot be 

 placed in one or the other of seven, or more properly speaking, eight 

 great Orders; so that, unlike the botanist, the entomologist is not 

 bewildered by an innumerable array of these Orders, though he has 

 five times as many species to deal with. These Orders comprise 

 about two hundred families, many of which may, for practical pur- 

 poses, be grouped into one family — as, for instance, the seven families 

 of Digger-wasps and the five large families which have all the same 

 habits as the true or genuine Ichneumon-flies. Many more maybe 

 neglected as small, rare, or unimportant; so that practically 

 there will remain about a hundred family types to be learned. Each 

 family, as Agassiz, has well remarked, may, with a little practice, be 

 distinguished at a glance by its general appearance, just as every child 

 with a little practice, learns to distinguish the family of A's from the 

 family of B's, and these from the family of C's in the alphabet. 

 There is the old English A, the German text A, and a host of orna- 



