INTRODUCTION. 



As it is the primary object of this report to diffuse information 

 upon an important topic with which very few are at present con- 

 versant, I have throughout endeavored to treat the subject in a 

 plain, familiar manner, avoiding any unnecessary resort to techni- 

 cal language, and using no terms but such as will be found clearly 

 defined in dictionaries which are in every school district in our 

 State. A few words, such as antennae, thorax, abdomen, and elytra, 

 which are so common in works upon insects that no one can 

 expect to obtain the slightest acquaintance with this science with- 

 out becoming familiar with them, I have employed, as it would 

 savor of fastidiousness to substitute in their stead the correspond- 

 ing English terms of horns or feelers, chest, body, and wing- 

 covers, which applied to insects are modified from their common 

 meaning, and the general reader will encounter much the same 

 task in familiarizing himself to this modified signification that he 

 will have in learning the more definite and convenient technical 

 terms and their signification. 



Those portions of the report which are designed for perusal 

 only when one has specimens before him of which he is desirous 

 to ascertain the names, are inserted in a type of a smaller size. 

 The dimensions of the several insects, larvae, &c., are expressed 

 in inches and the fractional parts of an inch, 1 .25 thus implying 

 an inch and a quarter, 0.75 seventy-five hundredths, or three- 

 fourths of an inch, &c. 



With these explanations I submit to you this report, with the 

 hope that it may aid in rendering this branch of science more 

 known to our citizens and available in adding to their comfort and 

 welfare. 



ASA riTCH. 



FitcKs Point, {East Greenwich P. 0.,) March 14, 1855. 



P. S. The Legislature having made provisions for a continu- 

 ance of this work, as another report will be presented the coming 

 year, a number of specie? which are in a state of forwardness for 

 publication, and which we had contemplated inserting in the pre- 

 sent document, are withheld in the crowded state of the Society's 

 volume of Transactions the present year, with the hope that we 



