68 LONDON INSECTS 



With the help of Mr. William Dunbar and the 

 editor of the London Postal Directory it might be 

 possible to make out a list of the human families 

 inhabiting London and their occupations. But to do 

 the same for its Insects would be quite impossible. The 

 outside which any prudent man would attempt within 

 the limits of a chapter, is to mention one here and 

 there enough to show that, as with the Birds, we have 

 typical representatives in London of all the principal 

 natural groups. 



But even this is less simple than it seems, for at 

 starting we find ourselves face to face with questions 

 which have vexed naturalists from the days of Aristotle, 

 2000 years or so ago ; and probably from much earlier 

 times, for Solomon wrote of creeping things, and Moses 

 certainly had made some study of them. What are to be 

 called ' true insects ' ? and is there any one way in which 

 they fall more naturally than another into groups ? 



The decision at which the learned have now arrived, 

 with something like one mind, as to the answer to the 

 first question What shall an insect be ? is that true 

 insects shall not, as was once held, be all such articu- 

 lated (outside cased and jointed) animals as may be cut 

 into sections an arrangement which lumped up Crabs 

 and Lobsters with Gnats and Butterflies but such 

 articulated creatures only, with or without wings, as 

 may, at one time at least of their existence, consist of 

 exactly thirteen segments, and may in the perfect state 

 jind themselves masters of six legs, no more and no less. 



When one is told that this short definition covers 



