126 London Insects. 



to meet than a company of Potato Bugs crossing the 

 Atlantic on a railway platform. 



There is a tradition that an insect even more 

 hateful, the common bug, was unknown in England 

 before the great fire, and that it was first imported 

 with the fir wood brought over wholesale to rebuild 

 the city. 



It is impossible now to say how far the story may 

 or may not be founded on fact ; but as most of the 

 timber used in building before 1660 was most likely 

 native-grown, there is nothing improbable in it. 

 The passage in Matthew's Bible, published a hundred 

 years before the fire, which gives as the promise of 

 the 9 ist Psalm that we shall "not be afraid of the 

 bugs by night," cannot be quoted as any proof that 

 they were known then, as it is only in later days that 

 the application of the word has been limited to the 

 particular " terror by night " which now monopolises 

 it. But if there is any truth whatever in the story 

 it ought to make all of us who are fond of a potato, 

 Irishmen in particular, very grateful to the authorities 

 whose energetic action not taken until Germany 

 had already been successfully invaded has so far 

 succeeded in keeping the Colorado Beetle from 

 landing in any force, if at all, on the coasts of 

 England or Ireland. 



" Insects," creatures made in sections, insectse 

 (" entomology," the science of the study of insects, 

 is a compound of the same word in a Greek dress), 

 stand about a quarter of the way up the great ladder 

 of intelligent life, which has man on the highest 

 rung which we can see clearly now, and its foot on 

 the uncertain ground "that low department of the 

 organic world from which the two great branches 

 rise and diverge," where creatures without heads or 



