SUMMARY OF THE CARABIDiE. 63 



the Stag Beetle, but Linnaeus was the first who gave it to the 

 Ground Beetle; and though a protest was lodged against the 

 name, it has been so universally employed that it will certainly 

 continue to hold its place. 



Now as to the part which the Carabidse play in the world. 

 They are of but very slight direct use to man. In fact, very few 

 insects are directly utilized ; and with the exception of the Bee, 

 the Silk Moth, the Lac Insect, the Blister Beetle, and one or two 

 others, the hundreds of thousands of insects that inhabit the 

 world are not converted to any direct use. 



With regard to the Carabidae, the only direct use that is made 

 of them, as far as I can discover, is that in some places where 

 they are very numerous they are collected and boiled down so 

 as to extract the fat, of which a kind of soap is made. I fancy 

 that if the soap-makers in question were better entomologists 

 they would not use for this purpose the perfect insects, but the 

 larvae, these being filled with fat which is afterwards absorbed 

 into the complicated mechanism of the Beetle. 



For my own part, I think that this non-usage of insects is not 

 so much due to the useless character of the creatures as to our 

 inability, or perhaps negligence, in discovering their properties. 

 I have no doubt that man had long inhabited the world before 

 he found out that the bee which could sting him could also 

 furnish him with sweet honev, and that he must have been 

 many years on the earth before he discovered that wax had any 

 other use than to hold honey. Then man must have been 

 very far advanced when he could utilize the silken thread spun 

 by a caterpillar; for he must not only have felt the need of 

 clothing, but must have passed through the stages of leaf-dress, 

 skin-dress, and cotton or linen dress, before the beauty and 

 strength of the silken fibre could have attracted him. It is so 

 at the present day, and there are many countries where silk- 

 producing insects live, and yet in which no use is made of the 

 silk, the men of those countries regarding the cocoons much as 

 we regard those of the commonest English moths or the webs 

 of the garden spiders. 



I cannot believe that the myriads of insects which surround 

 us contain no more uses than those few which we have managed 

 to discover and develop in so many thousand years, but think 

 that we have neglected to look for those uses because insects 



