PREFACE. 



In offering to the public this, his first essay in En- 

 tomology,, the author thinks it by no means unlikely 

 that he shall incur the charge of aiming at innova- 

 tions in the science. The following remarks are, 

 however, as he conceives, entirely practical, and the 

 examination of their accuracy is within the reach 

 of every entomological student. By such persons 

 at least, therefore, he trusts that they will be consi- 

 dered as proceeding from a wish to connect and 

 to reconcile with each other the observations of his 

 predecessors, rather than from an absurd ambition 

 to controvert or obliterate the result of their la- 

 bours. 



The author has for the present confined his at- 

 tention to one branch of the science; principally, 

 indeed, because he coincided with Fabricius in ima- 

 gining that on Monographs has been founded almost 

 every thing in the general systems now in use that 

 can strictly be called natural. But the vast num- 

 ber also of animated beings which has been added 



