128 London Insects. 



With the help of Sir Brydges Henniker 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, 2,000 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 articulated (outside-cased and jointed) 

 animals as may be cut into sections an arrange- 

 ment which lumped up Crabs and Lobsters, with 

 Gnats and Butterflies but such articidated 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 find themselves 

 masters of six legs, no more and no less. 



When one is told that this short definition 

 covers almost everything in England in the known 

 world, indeed which we should be likely in 

 common talk to speak of as "an insect" with the 



