KIKBY AND SPENCE, THE ENTOMOLOGISTS. lU 



There is no science to which the adage. Dies diem docet, is more 

 strikingly applicable than to natural history. New discoveries are 

 daily made, and will be made to the end of time. The utmost, there- 

 fore, tliat can reasonably be expected from naturalists, is to keep pace 

 with the progress of knowledge ; and this our authors have used their 

 best diligence to accomplish. They tell us, that every new year since 

 they took the subject in hand, up to the very time when the sheets 

 were sent to the press, numerous corrections and alterations have 

 suggested themselves. Accordingly, they informed the reader in an 

 advertisement to the fifth edition, which was published in 1828, that 

 a gradual and great alteration had taken place in the nomenclature of 

 the genera,. occasioned by the old ones, as set down in former editions, 

 being further subdivided according to their natural groups, and each 

 distinguished as a genus or subgenus, by its peculiar name. Thus it 

 is manifest that the authors of the " Introduction to Entomology," 

 not only originated and completed a first-rate work on the subject, 

 both as a strictly scientific and a popular treatise, but that they have 

 kept pace, nay, have taken the lead, in making constant discoveries, 

 as well as in noting and arranging every thing new which is contri- 

 buted from any other quarter. 



We think it cannot be misplaced, under the names of Kirby and 

 Spence, to consider for a little the advantages to be derived from the 

 study which they have so assiduously and satisfactorily pursued. These 

 advantages, indeed, they themselves earnestly labour, and at great 

 length, to lay before their readers, as well as to answer the objections 

 urged by those who endeavour to throw obloquy on the science. For 

 instance, they say, that amusement and instruction may doubtless be 

 derived from mineralogy and botany; but they also argue that ento- 

 mology is not certainly behind any of her sisters in these respects. 

 Insects indeed appear to have been Nature's favourite productions, in 

 which, to manifest her power and skill, she has combined and concen- 

 trated almost all that is either beautiful and graceful, interesting and 

 alluring, or curious and singular, in every other class and order of her 

 children, and even to the minutest has given the most delicate touch 

 and highest finish of her pencil. Some she has armed with glittering 

 mail, possessing all the lustre of burnished metals ; in others, she 

 lights up the luminous radiance of polished gems. She has bedecked 

 a few with what looks like liquid drops or plates of gold and silver, 

 or with scales which mimic the colour and emit the ray of the same 

 precious metals. Like stones in their native state, some insects exhibit 

 a rough unpolished exterior, whilst others represent their smooth and 

 shining face after they have been submitted to the tool of the polisher. 

 Others again, by the rugged and various elevations and depressions 

 of their tuberculated crust, present to the eye of the beholder no unapt 

 imitation of the unequal surface of the earth — now studded with mis- 

 shapen rocks, ridges, and precipices, at one time swelling into hills 

 and mountains, and at another sinking into valleys, glens, and caves 

 — while not a few are covered with branching spines, which, with a 

 little stretch of fancy, as M. Reaumur observes, may represent a forest 

 of trees. 



