^1 PREFACE. 



Yeats's Institutions of Entomology, which appeared the year after, and 

 Barbut's Genera Insectorum, which came out in 17S1, — the two former 

 in too unattractive, and the latter in too expensive a form for general 

 readers, — are the only works professedly devoted to this object which the 

 English language can boast. 



Convinced that this was the chief obstacle to the spread of Ento- 

 mology in Britain, the authors of the present work resolved to do what was 

 in their power to remove it, and to introduce their countrymen to a mine 

 of pleasure, new, boundless, and inexhaustible, and which, to judge from 

 their own experience, — formed in no contracted field of comparison, — 

 they can recommend as possessing advantages and attractions equal to 

 those held forth by most other branches of human learning. 



The next question was, in what way they should attempt to accomplish 

 this intention. If they had contented themselves with the first suggestion 

 that presented itself, and merely given a translation of one of the many 

 Introductions to Entomology extant in Latin, German, and French, add- 

 ing only a few obvious improvements, their task would have been very 

 easy ; but the slightest examination showed that, in thus proceeding, they 

 would have stopped far short of the goal which they were desirous of 

 reaching. In the technical department of the science they found much 

 confusion, and numerous errors and imperfections ; the same name some- 

 times applied to parts anatomically quite different, and different names to 

 parts essentially the same, while others of primary importance were with- 

 out any name at all. And with reference to the anatomy and physiology 

 of insects, they could no where meet with a full and accurate generaliza- 

 tion of the various facts connected with these subjects, scattered here and 

 there in the pages of the authors who have studied them. 



They therefore resolved to begin, in some measure, de novo, to institute 

 a rigorous revision of the terms employed, making such additions and 

 improvements as might seem to be called for ; and to attempt a more 

 complete and collected account of the existing discoveries respecting the 

 anatomical and physiological departments of the science than has yet 

 been given to the world ; — and to these two points their plan at the out- 

 set was limited. 



It soon, however, occurred to them, that it would be of little use to 

 write a book which no one would peruse ; and that, in the present age 

 of love for light reading, there could not be much hope of leading 

 students to the dry abstractions of the science, unless they were conducted 

 through the attractive portal of the economy and natural history of its 

 objects. To this department, therefore, they resolved to devote the first 



