FOREWORD 



At the time of his sudden death, on September 4, 1962, Robert 

 E. Snodgrass was working on a book we might call "An Encyclopedia 

 of Insect Anatomy." His notes and correspondence suggest several 

 possible titles, but this one seems most appropriate for the material. 

 To judge from the list of terms he had compiled for the letters A to 

 D, I would estimate that the work was only somewhere between 10 

 and 20 percent completed. Most manuscripts would be unsalvageable 

 when in such an early stage, but this one need not be thrown away. 

 An encyclopedia may be considered as a dictionary in which definitions 

 of maximum brevity are replaced by essays on the various terms. 

 In this sense, each of the essays Dr. Snodgrass had written may be 

 considered as complete — the work is incomplete only in the sense 

 that he had progressed only a short way down the list of projected 

 essays. Hence the title chosen for this publication. 



In consultation with Mrs. Snodgrass and others it was decided not 

 to attempt completing the work, because who besides Snodgrass 

 could write Snodgrass's Encyclopedia? The essays are published 

 almost word for word from the original manuscript. However, this 

 was preliminary manuscript which did require some editorial emen- 

 dations. No doubt, if he had lived, he would have done more revi- 

 sion — such was his liabit — but I have kept changes to a minimum 

 in order not to alter the author's meaning. Actually he had already 

 done some rewriting, as shown by the fact that there were three 

 versions of "Metamorphosis," two of "Pleuron," etc. In such cases 

 the most extensive version is used here ; in some cases additions to 

 it are taken from the less extensive versions. No attempt was made 

 to make the several essays stylistically consistent with one another ; 

 thus some begin with derivation of the word and/or a definition ; 

 others do not. 



I presume that if this material had been completed it would have 

 been assembled with the terms in alphabetical order. But, although 

 Snodgrass had an aphabetical list from A to D, he was not writing 

 simply by going down this list in 1, 2, 3 order. Rather he was writ- 

 ing on series of related topics. Accordingly, in view of the limited 

 amount that had been finished, it seemed preferable to assemble the 

 finished articles into a natural rather than an alphabetical order. 

 Perhaps this decision has one disadvantage. A certain degree of repe- 



