BULLETIN 



OF THE 



BROOKLYN ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Vol. X October, 1915 No. 4 



THE FIRST INSECTS IN THE WORLD. 



By R. p. Dow, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



During the first jeons of human progress mankind was too 

 busy with the struggle for existence to study the insects. Men 

 did not find time to consider one dififerentiable from any other 

 animal, except in size. It remained for Aristotle, the greatest of 

 the Greek philosophers, about 330 B. C, to observe a distinction 

 and name the class. His \vord cntonios means an animal with 

 two insectations, dividing" the whole into head, chest and abdomen. 

 This definition fails to exclude w^orms, arachnida, scorpions, sea 

 creatures, etc. But, it must be remembered that Latreille and 

 other great modern masters confounded insects and crustaceans. 

 The Latin word insectum is a direct translation of the Aristotelian 

 term without other significance. 



Nevertheless the harm or aid to humanity given by the insect 

 world must have been recognized in a primitive period. Less 

 than 1 50 years ago there was restored to the European scholarship 

 the mass of literature of the Zend and Sanscrit languages, both 

 antedating all others known. The Zend Avesta, the Revelation 

 of Ahura-Mazda, creator of Hght and goodness to Zoroaster, the 

 purest minded man of that region in that time has a date. 

 Aristotle states that Zoroaster lived 6,000 years before Plato. It 

 is safe to accept this date without much reserve, for Plato, above 

 all Greek philosophers, treasured ancient lore, recalling even the 

 lost continent of Atlantis, the days when Egypt, old in scholar- 

 ship, taught infant Greece, when Zeus was a human youth on 

 Olympus. 



The first Fargard of the Avesta. the narrative of Zoroaster 

 himself, describes the revelation of Ormazd, the classic Persian 



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