OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 4 9 



titranS, F.); and on a second examination you will find 

 that, however alike in most respects, they differ widely in 

 the shape of their proboscis ; that of the Stomoxys being 

 a horny sharp-pointed weapon, capable of piercing the 

 flesh, while the soft blunt organ of the Musca is perfectly 

 incompetent to any such operation. In future, while you 

 no longer load the whole race of the house-fly with the 

 execrations which properly belong to a quite different 

 tribe, you will cease being surprised that an ordinary de- 

 scription should be insufficient to discriminate an insect, 

 It is to this insufficiency that we must attribute our igno- 

 rance of so many of the insects mentioned by the older 

 naturalists, previously to the systematic improvements of 

 the immortal Linne : and to the same cause we must re- 

 fer the impossibility of determining what species are al- 

 luded to in the accounts of many modern travellers and 

 agriculturists who have been ignorant of Entomology as 

 a science. Instances without number of this impossibi- 

 lity might be adduced, but I shall confine myself to two. 



One of the greatest pests of Surinam and other low re- 

 gions in South America, is the insect called in the West 

 Indies, where it is also troublesome, the chigoe [Pulex 

 ■penetrans^ L.), a minute species, to the attacks of which I 

 shall again have occasion to advert. This insect is men- 

 tioned by almost all the writers on the countries where it 

 is found. Not less than eight or ten of them have endea- 

 voured to give a full description of it, and some of them 

 have even figured it ; and yet, strange to say, it was not 

 certainly known whether it was a flea {Pulex) or a mite 

 (Acarus), till a competent naturalist undertook to investi- 

 gate its history, and in a short paper in the Swedish Trans* 



VOL, I. e. 



