440 



HISTORY OF INSECTS. 



beings, that every species requires its distinct 

 history. An exact plan, therefore, of Nature's 

 operations in this minute set of creatures, is 

 not to be expected; and yet such a general 

 picture may be given, as is sufficient to show 

 the protection which Providence affords its 

 smallest as well as its largest productions, and 

 to display that admirable circulation in nature 

 by which one set of living beings find subsis- 

 tence from the destruction of another ; and by 

 which life is continued without. a pause in 

 every part of the creation. 



Upon casting a slight view over the whole 

 insect tribe, just when they are supposed to 

 rouse from their state of annual torpidity, when 

 they begin to feel the genial influence of 

 spring, and again exhibit new life in every 

 part of nature, their numbers and their varie- 

 ties seem to exceed all powers of calculation, 

 and they are indeed too great for description. 

 When we look closer, however, we shall find 

 some striking similitudes, either in their pro- 

 pagation, their mariners, or their form, that 

 give us a hint for grouping several of them 

 into one description, and thus enabling us to 

 shorten the labour of a separate history for 

 every species. Swammerdam, Reaumur, and 

 Linnaeus, have each attempted to abridge the 

 task of description, by throwing a number of 

 similar animals into distinct classes, and thus 

 making one general history stand for all. I 

 will avail myself of their labours ; and uniting 

 their general distinctions, throw the whole 

 class of insects into four separate distributions, 

 giving under each the history of every species 

 that seems to me considerable enough to de- 

 serve our notice. Thus our labour will be 

 shortened ; and the very rank in which an in- 

 sect is placed, will, in some measure, exhibit 

 a considerable part of its history. 1 



1 Sketch of the History of Insects. The observation 

 of this numerous, diversified, and interesting class of 

 beings, and, consequently, the origin of entomological 

 science, must necessarily have been coeval with the crea- 

 tion of man. About five hundred years before Christ 

 Hippocrates wrote upon insects. Aristotle describes them 

 as consisting of three parts head, trunk and abdomen : 

 he then speaks of what he calls tribes of insects, dividing 

 them, from their modeof progression, into those that walk 

 and those that fly, noticing and commenting on their wings, 

 proboscis, antennae, and feet, carefully observing the latter, 

 and exhibiting in this, as in every other department of 

 zoology, thataccuracy which soeminently distinguished the 

 philosophical preceptor of Alexander the Great. Pliny is 

 the next author of any note whose attention seems to have 

 been directed to the study in question, for, in his ele- 

 venth book, he speaks of various bees, wasps, &c. From 

 this period, down to 1519, when the work of Albertus 

 Magnus upon insects was published, the science made a 

 silent but certain progress. Its advance in the succeed- 

 ing thirty years is visible in the efficient attempt at a 

 better system of classification than had hitherto prevailed, 

 in the De Animalibus Subterraneis of the last mentioned 

 author, in 1549. He there divides insects into three 

 classes those that walk, those that fly, and those that 



In our cursory inspection of the insect tribe, 

 the first animals that offer themselves are those 

 which want wings, that appear crawling about 

 on every plant, and on every spot of earth we 



swim, describing several species of each class. In 1552, 

 Wotton published his De Differcntiis Animulium, and 

 was followed by numerous writers on the subject of in- 

 sects, whose books possessed more or less merit: some of 

 them were illustrated with figures, and all tended to ren- 

 der the study more worthy of the name of a science. 

 We may mention in particular the folio of the learned 

 and liberal Aldrovandus, IC02, and Mouffet's Insectorum 

 Theatrum. The Expert 'msnta, &c. of Recli, 1671, also 

 deserves especial attention for its triumphant refutation 

 of the then popular error of equivocal generation an er- 

 ror whose origin is buried in the remotest antiquity, up- 

 held by the ancient philosophers, and not even yet eradi- 

 cated from the minds of the common people. Redi de- 

 monstrated the fact, that every living animal is derived 

 from an egg, deposited by a parent every way similar to 

 itself. 



Previous to this, in 1669, the great work of Swam- 

 merdam Historia Insectorum, Generalis was given to 

 the public, but was utterly neglected until the death of 

 the author, in 1680. when it was instantly discovered to 

 be of such value as to demand a translation. No book, 

 seller could be fonnd who would risk the expense of 

 printing the Biblia Natures, a second wcrk from the 

 same pen, until it accidentally fell into the possession of 

 the learned Boerhaave, who published it, together with 

 the life of Swammerdam, in 1738. In that book, which 

 is still considered as one of the most valuable we possess 

 on the anatomy of insects, he divides them into the four 

 following classes : 1. those whose characters are con- 

 stant, undergoing no change whatever, and which preserve 

 for life the form in which they leave the ovum; spiders, 

 &c. : 2. those which, on their liberation from the ovum, 

 have the appearance of an insect without wings, but 

 otherwise completely formed, and that pass into the state 

 of a nymph or chrysalis, from which they issue provided 

 with wings, and fitted for continuing the species ; dra- 

 gon-flies, &c. : 3. those which, having existed in the 

 ovum in a disguised form, leave it under the appearance 

 of an insect (caterpillar), which feeds and increases in 

 size, while the various parts of the new animal, into 

 which it is to be converted, are forming under its skin, 

 and finally becomes a nymph; moths, butterflies, &c. : 

 4. those which, having arrived at maturity, do not divest 

 themselves of their skin, but pass into the chrysalis state 

 under it, remaining there till the metamorphosis is com- 

 pletely effected, when, quitting both skins at once, they 

 come forth in their final and perfect form; iclmeumons, 

 &c. 



Malpighi and Vallisnieri also enriched the science 

 with the results of their observations, in common with 

 others of less note. The Memoires, &c., of Perrault 

 (Paris, 1671), Lister's book on spiders, the Historia 

 Animalium dnglioe, &c., (167^), and those of Ferrand, 

 Mollerus, and Berelio, all tended to the same result. In 

 16S5, a Latin edition of the works of Goedart was pub- 

 lished by Dr Lister, just named, a learned entomologist 

 of that period, and physician to queen Anne, who gave a 

 new arrangement to the materials collected by his indus- 

 trious though not very acute author, who was more of a 

 collector and painter of insects than a scientific observer. 

 In that work, Lister establishes ten classes of Insects : 

 1. moths with erect wings, or diurnal butterflies; 2. 

 moths with horizontal wings, the perfect insect of the ca- 

 terpillar, called the geometra by Goedart; 3. moths with 

 deflected wings: 4. libellulrc; 5. bees; 6. beetles; 7. 

 grasshoppers: 8. dipterous flies; 9. millipedes; and, 10. 

 spiders. There is nothing, however, in this mode of di- 

 vision, which merits any peculiar praise, or that should 



