xvi PREFACE. 
invaluable for its accuracy and completeness, they would be pra- 
vided in their. old age with an object capable not merely of 
keeping off that ¢ediwm vite so often inseparable from the relin- 
quishment of active life, but of supplying an unfailing fund of 
innocent amusement, an incentive to exercise, and, consequently, 
no mean degree of health and enjoyment. 
Some, who, with an ingenious author *, regard as superfluous 
ail pains to show the utility of Natural History in reference to the 
common purposes of life, asking, “if it be not enough to open a 
source of copious and cheap amusement, which tends to harmonise 
the mind, and elevate it to worthy conceptions of nature and its 
Author? —if a greater blessing to a man ean be offered than 
happiness at an easy rate, unalloyed by any debasing mixture? ” 
may think the earnestness displayed on this head, and the length 
which has been gone in refuting objections, needless. But Entomo- 
logy is so peculiarly cireumstanced, that, without removing these 
obstacles, there could he no hope of winning votaries to the pursuit. 
Pliny felt the necessity of following this course in the outset of his 
book which treats on insects ; and a similar one has been originally 
called for in introducing the study even to those countries where 
the science is now most honoured. In France, Reaumur, in each 
of the successive volumes of his immortal work, found it essential 
to seize every opportunity of showing that the study of insects is 
not a frivolous amusement, nor devoid of utility, as his countrymen 
conceived it ; and in Germany, Sulzer had to traverse the same road, 
telling us, in proof of the necessity of this procedure, that on show- 
ing his works on insects with their plates to two very sensible men, 
one commended him for employing his leisure hours in preparing 
prints that would amuse children and keep them out of mischief, 
and the other admitted that they might furnish very pretty patterns 
for ladies’ aprons! And though in this country things are not now 
quite so bad as they were when Lady Glanville’s will was attempted 
to be set aside on the ground of lunacy, evinced by no other act than 
her fondness for collecting insects ; and Ray had to appear at Exeter 
on the frial as a witness of her sanity +; yet nothing less than 
line upon line can be expected to eradicate the deep-rooted preju- 
* Dr. Aikin, ft See Harris’s Aurelian under Papilio Cinzia. 
