THE ATTRACTIONS OF 

 ENTOMOLOGY 



Enhanced by a Simple Method of Preserving- 

 Insects, Etc. 



ALFRED MOORE, B.A. 



Until very recent years the collection of insects was 

 regarded by most people as an employment suitable only for 

 children, whilst adults who devoted themselves to the study 

 of these creatures were looked upon as amiable simpletons 

 wasting their time in an utterly useless pursuit. There can 

 be no doubt, that the study of entomology forms a very 

 congenial and efficient, though greatly neglected, method of 

 training all the most important faculties of mind and body 

 in the young, and it likewise provides an extremely delightful 

 and instructive hobby which can be pursued with unfailing 

 lifelong interest by intelligent adults of all ages and widely 

 different tastes. Lovers of beauty, in colour, in form, and 

 in structure, are richly rewarded by observation of these 

 as displayed by insects, particularly in tropical or semi- 

 tropical countries. Those who are interested in mechanical 

 problems do well to study the infinite variety of strange 

 devices with which insects are endowed, for it is scarcely an 

 exaggeration to say that most human contrivances, — either 

 simple tools, such as hooks, knives, files, saws, drills, etc, or 

 complicated machine processes, like spinning, weaving, etc., 

 or even such modern inventions as aeroplanes, submarines > 

 etc., — are merely clumsy imitations of the wonderfully com- 

 pact instruments and efficient arrangements found even 



1 To exemplify this statement ; the finest surgical needle is a coarse 

 article compared with the proboscis of a mosquito, yet this latter is in 

 reality a complete surgical dressing case comprising a pair of lancets, 

 a delicate probe, a couple of fine saws, an only too efficient aspirating 

 needle, and a hypodermic syringe/ We are dependent on an insigni- 

 ficant caterpillar for the delicate thread which forms our most beautiful 

 silken fabrics — the aeroplane is obviously modelled on the structure of 

 a dragonfly, — whilst the submarine and its periscope find their living 

 likeness in a mosquito larva with its breathing tube. 



