7^i 



CHAPTER I. 



ON THE EXTENT AND APPLICATION OF THE TERM 

 INSECT. 



The ordinary English name Insect is given to the indivi- 

 duals composing the most extensive class of animals, to 

 which Linna3us and the older authors gave the name Insecta, 

 a word derived from the Latin, and signifying an animal cut 

 or divided into numerous parts or segments, and equally ap- 

 plicable to various species which have the chief divisions of 

 the body connected together by slender points of attach- 

 ment ; the legs in like manner are insected or composed of 

 various articulations. It is not surprising that these charac- 

 ters should have attracted the notice of the earliest natural- 

 ists, and we accordingly find the group of insects estabhshed 

 by the first writers upon zoology ; not, indeed, with that 

 precision of definition which the anatomical researches of 

 modern authors have enabled us to apply to the group ; but, 

 on the contrary, united with many other small invertebrated 

 animals, which, even in the present day, are considered as 

 insects by ignorant persons. On examining the body of an 

 insect, we find it externally covered with a strong scaly 

 coating, which, when internally examined, is found to give 

 support to the muscles and other organs, thus becoming as 

 it were an external vertebra; but the observation will im- 

 mediateh' occur that the horny nature of this external cover- 

 ing must necessarily })revent the growth of the animal ; and 



