XXU INTRODUCTION. 



Amongst the other objects of Natural History collected in Captain, now Sir 

 John, Franklin's last Expedition to the Polar Seas, the Insects form a very prin- 

 cipal and interesting feature, not only on account of the number of individual 

 species, which is considerable, but also on account of several new forms which 

 they present to the scientific Entomologist; some of them connecting tribes before 

 placed far asunder, 2 and filling up many vacant places in a scientific arrangement 

 of these minute but not unimportant animals ; others exhibiting an Asiatic aspect ; 3 

 and the majority representing, as it were, known European types; and though vary- 

 ing from them in characters of more or less importance, known European species; 

 so that the American Entomologists, for want of comparing one with the other, 

 appear often to have confounded them. 



Dr. Richardson, who was associated with Sir John Franklin in his first, as well 

 as in his second, Journey, and to whom was intrusted the Natural History Depart- 

 ment of the Expedition, the duties of which office he fulfilled with the same inde- 

 fatigable zeal and singular skill, that his excellent commander evinced in the general 

 conduct of it, having, at the recommendation of my worthy and learned friend, the 

 Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow, Sir W, J. Hooker, placed in my hands the 

 above collection for arrangement and description, I must here premise a few obser- 

 vations on the plan I intend to pursue for the accomplishment of those objects. 



I must first observe that the majority of the insects in question were necessarily 

 collected during the brief summers of the Arctic regions, when it was requisite to 

 use all possible dispatch in proceeding northwards while the season permitted : it 

 was to be expected, therefore, that they must be hastily put together in boxes, 

 or bottles of spirits, as they were collected, but it is wonderful, considering their 

 number, that so little damage was sustained from this mode of packing them, none 

 having received such injury as to render it difficult to describe them, except some 

 of the Diptera, and the Libelhdina, of which there seem to have been many, and 

 which were so mutilated, most having lost their abdomen, that they could not be 

 ascertained or described. 



3 For instance Opisthius Rkhardsoni, Plate I, Fig. 9. 3 Carcbus Vietwyhovii, Plate I, Fig. 3. 



