52 



ENTOMOLOGY. 



rardens are ravaged by aphides and caterpillars. It 

 is somewhat startling, to affirm that the condition of 

 the human race is seriously injured by these petty 

 annoyances ; but it is perfectly true, that the art and 

 industry of man have not yet been able to overcome 

 the collective force, the individual perseverance, and 

 the complicated machinery of destruction which 

 insects employ. A small ant, according to a most 

 careful and philosophical observer (Humboldt), op- 

 poses almost invincible obstacles to the progress of 

 civilization in many parts of the equinoctial zone. 

 These animals devour paper and parchment ; they 

 destroy every book and manuscript. Many provin- 

 ces of Spanish America cannot, in consequence, 

 show a written document of a hundred years' exist- 

 ence. " What developement," he adds, " can the 

 civilization of a people assume, if there be nothing to 

 connect the present with the past ; if the deposito- 

 ries of human knowledge must be constantly renewed; 

 if the monuments of genius and wisdom cannot be 

 transmitted to posterity ?" Again, there are beetles 

 which deposit their larvae in trees, in such formidable 

 numbers, that whole forests perish beyond the power 

 of remedy. The pines of the Hartz have thus been 

 destroyed to an enormous extent ; and at one place 

 in South Carolina, at least 90 trees in every 100, 

 upon a tract of 2000 acres, were swept away by a 

 small, black, winged bug. Wilson, the historian of 

 American birds, speaking of the labours of the ivory- 

 billed wood-pecker, says, " Would it be believed 

 that the larvae of an insect, or fly, no larger than a 

 grain of rice, should silently, and in one season, 

 destroy some thousand acres of pine trees, many of 

 them from two to three feet in diameter, and 150 

 feet high? In some places, the whole woods, as 

 far as you can see around you, are dead, strip- 

 ped of the bark, their wintry-looking arms and 

 bare trunks bleaching in the sun, and tumbling 

 in ruins before every blast." The subterraneous 

 larvas of a species of beetle lias often caused a 

 complete failure of the seed-corn, as in the district 

 of Halle in 1812. The corn-weevil, which extracts 

 the flour from grain, leaving the husk behind, will 

 destroy the contents of the largest storehouses in a 

 very short period. The wire-worm and the turnip- 

 fly are dreaded by every farmer. The ravages of 

 the locust are too well known not to be at once 

 recollected, as an example of the formidable collec- 

 tive power of the insect race. The white ants of 

 tropical countries sweep away whole villages with as 

 much certainty as 'a fire or an inundation ; ships even 

 have been destroyed by these indefatigable republics, 

 and the docks and embankments of Europe have 

 been threatened by such minute ravagers. 



Sketch of the History of Entomology. The obser- 

 vation of this numerous, diversified, and interesting 

 class of beings, and, consequently, the origin of ento- 

 mological science, must necessarily have been 

 coeval with the creation of man. Without, however, 

 insisting upon this, or referring to the sacred volume 

 in proof thereof, we shall content ourselves with 

 dating it in the 80th Olympiad, or five hundred years 

 before Christ, as, according to Pliny, it was about 

 that period when Hippocrates wrote upon insects. 

 Aristotle (ng) T lro( xa^iuv run auruv) describes 

 them as consisting of three parts head, trunk and 

 abdomen : he then speaks of what he calls tribet of 

 insects, dividing them, from their mode of progres- 

 sion, into those that walk and those that fly, noticing 

 and commenting on their wings, proboscis, antennae, 

 and feet, carefully observing the latter, and exhibit- 

 ing in this, as in every other department of zoology, 

 that accuracy which so eminently distinguished the 

 philosophical preceptor of Alexander the Great. 

 Pliny is the next author of any note whose attention 



seems to have been directed to the study in question, 

 for, in his eleventh book, he speaks of various bees, 

 wasps, SEC. From this period, down to 1519, when 

 the work of Albertus Magnus upon insects was pub- 

 lished, the science made a silent but certain progress. 

 Its advance in the succeeding thirty years is visible 

 in the efficient attempt at a better system of classifi- 

 cation than had hitherto prevailed, in the De Ani- 

 malibus Subterraneis of the last mentioned author, 

 in 1549. He there divides insects into three classes 

 those that walk, those that fly, and those that 

 swim, describing several species of each class. In 

 1552, Wotton published his De Differentiis Anima- 

 lium, and was followed by numerous writers on the 

 subject of insects, whose books possessed more or 

 less merit : some of them were illustrated with 

 figures, and all tended to render the study more 

 worthy of the name of a science. To particularize 

 them within the limited bounds of an article of this 

 nature, is impossible. We must, therefore, be per- 

 mitted to pass them over with this general notice, 

 the folio of the learned and liberal Aldrovandus, 

 1602, and Mouflet's Insectorum Theatrum, excepted, 

 which richly merits distinction. The Experimenta, 

 &c. of Redi, 1671, deserves especial attention for its 

 triumphant refutation of the then popular error of 

 equivocal generation an error whose origin is buried 

 in the remotest antiquity, upheld by the ancient phi- 

 losophers, and not even yet eradicated from the minds 

 of the common people. Redi demonstrated the fact, 

 that every living animal is derived from an egg, 

 deposited by a parent every way similar to itself. 



Previous to this, in 1669, the great work of Swam- 

 merdam Historia Insectorum Generalis was given 

 to the public, but was utterly neglected until the 

 death of the author, in 1680, when it was instantly 

 discovered to be of such value as to demand a trans- 

 lation. No bookseller could be found who would 

 risk the expense of printing the Biblia Nuturce, a 

 second work from the same pen, until it accidentally 

 fell into the possession of the learned Boerhaave, who 

 published it, together with the life of Swammerdam, 

 in 1738. In that book, which is still considered as 

 one of the most valuable we possess on the anatomy 

 of insects, he divides them into the four following 

 classes : 1. those whose characters are constant, 

 undergoing no change whatever, and which preserve 

 for lire the form in which they leave the ovum ; 

 spiders, &c. : 2. those which, on their liberation from 

 the ovum, have the appearance of an insect without 

 wings, but otherwise completely formed, and that 

 pass into the state of a nymph or chrysalis, from 

 which they issue provided with wings, and fitted 

 for continuing the species; dragon-flies, &c. : 3. those 

 which, having existed in the ovum in a disguised 

 form, leave it under the appearance of an insect 

 (caterpillar), which feeds and increases in size, while 

 the various parts of the new animal, into which it is 

 to be converted, are forming under its skin, and 

 finally becomes a nymph ; moths, butterflies, &c. : 4. 

 those which, having arrived at maturity, do not divest 

 themselves of their skin, but pass into the chrysalis 

 state under it, remaining there till the metamorphosis 

 is completely effected, when, quitting both skins at 

 once, they come forth in their final and perfect form; 

 ichneumons, &c. 



Malpighi and Vallisnieri also enriched the science 

 with the results of their observations, in common 

 with others of less note. The Memoires, &c., of 

 Perrault (Paris, 1671), Lister's book on spiders, the 

 Historia Animalium Angliae* &c., (1678), and those 

 of Ferrand, Mollerus, and Berelio, all tended to the 

 same result. In 1685, a Latin edition of the works 

 of Goedart was published by Dr Lister, just named, a 

 learned entomologist of that period, and physician to 



