PRIMITIVE ENTOMOLOGISTS. 15 



thy rein, or matter-of-fact people will declare that thou art 

 careering with us beyond earth, or sky, or water, even into 

 the intangible realms of Imagination. They would do us 

 wrong, but to prove ourselves as fond of fact as they, and 

 thou, our favourite, no phantom horse, we will e'en dismount, 

 and ere we start with thee on fresh excursions, tell something 

 of thy birth and parentage, and point out other of thy excel- 

 lent merits in more sober fashion. 



Entomology signifies the study of Insects, from whose pe- 

 culiar formation the term owes its origin ; the bodies of this 

 part of the Animal Creation being inserted, or divided into 

 three principal parts, head, trunk, and abdomen, besides other 

 subdivisions. For this reason, the Latin name Insecta, Greek 

 Evrojxa, from whence Entomology. 



Now of these little insected animals, thus curiously divided 

 from the rest of animated nature (except the Crustacea, once 

 also classed as Insects), many great men of antiquity, philo- 

 sophers as well as poets, thought no scorn. Among these, 

 Aristotle, Pliny, and Virgil, wrote of them largely, though, 

 indeed, somewhat erroneously ; the former, with other similar 







fables, asserting not only that flies were meat-engendered (a 

 notion still ignorantly entertained), but that they also inherited 

 a disposition, fierce or harmless, according to that of their 

 flesh-fathers, when in life. Quite as absurdly, though more 

 poetically, Yirgil says or sings of Bees, that 



" From herbs and fragrant flowers, 

 They call their young." 



