352 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



met by the startling information that in some instances 

 it amounts to many thousands ! 



Among the remaining members of this family, all 

 of which we do not profess to enumerate, we may 

 include a host of individuals of the Genus Tetrix, a 

 group of comparatively small unmusical locusts, con- 

 taining more than one species ; but as the specific 

 characters laid down for them by one eminent ento- 

 mologist are not recognized by another of equal 

 eminence, we are perhaps justified in attempting to 

 divert the reader's attention from our own inability to 

 identify the different forms, with the usual convenient 

 appeal in similar emergencies ! " Who shall decide 

 when doctors disagree ?" 



CHAPTER VII. 

 INSECTS. THRIPS, LACE- WINGED FLIES, MAY FLIES. 



THE order, which in Westwood's classification, im- 

 mediately follows the Grasshoppers and Locusts,* is 

 made up of such very minute and generally little 

 known forms, that we deem any detailed allusion to 

 them out of place in this simple outline. With the 

 exception of the professed entomologist, who studies 

 their structure and economy, no one is more familiar 

 with them, or perhaps more unaffectedly disposed to 

 anathematize them than the gardener, and when the 

 latter sees the curled up shrivelled petals of his 

 choicest exotics, the drooping flabby leaves of his 

 melon and cucumber plants, his vines and his peach 



* Order THYSANOPTERA. From the Greek, thysanos, a 

 fringe and pteron, a wing. Wings four, all with fringed margins. 



