4 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 
the botanist could not hope to find even a new lichen or moss, by the 
appearance of several insects, driven there perhaps by the same cause as 
yourself, that you have not observed before. But should you, as I trust you 
will, feel a desire to attend to the manners and economy of insects, and 
become ambitious of making discoveries in this part of entomological 
science, I can assure you, from long experience, that you will here find an 
inexhaustible fund of novelty. For more than twenty years my attention 
has been directed to them, and during most of my summer walks my eyes 
have been employed in observing their ways; yet Ican say with truth, 
that so far from having exhausted the subject, within the last six months 
T have witnessed more interesting facts respecting their history than in 
many preceding years. To follow only the insects that frequent your own 
garden, from their first to their Jast state, and to trace all their proceed- 
ings, would supply an interesting amusement for the remainder of your 
life, and at its close you would leave much to be done by your successor ; 
for where we know thoroughly the history of one insect, there are hun- 
dreds concerning which we have ascertained little besides the bare fact of 
= their existence. , 
~~~ But numerous other sources of pleasure and information will open them- 
selves to you, not inferior to what any other science can furnish, when 
you enter more deeply into the study. Insects, indeed, appear to have 
been nature’s favourite productions, in which, to manifest her power and 
skill, she has combined and concentrated almost all that is either beau- 
tiful and graceful, interesting and alluring, or curious and singular, in every 
other class and order of her children, To these, her valued miniatures, 
she has given the most delicate touch and highest finish of her pencil. 
Numbers she has armed with glittering mail, which reflects a lustre like 
that of burnished metals?; in others she lights up the dazzling radiance of 
polished gems.?_ Some she has decked with what looks like liquid drops, 
or plates of gold and silver*; or with scales or pile, which mimic the 
colour and emit the ray of the same precious metals.* Some exhibit a 
rude exterior, like stones in their native state®, while others represent 
their smooth and shining face after they have been submitted to the tool of 
the polisher: others, again, like so many pigmy Atlases bearing on their 
backs a microcosm, by the rugged and various elevations and depressions 
of their tuberculated crust, present to the eye of the beholder no unapt 
imitation of the unequal surface of the earth, now horrid with mis-shapen 
rocks, ridges, and precipices — now swelling into hills and mountains, and 
now sinking into valleys, glens, and caves®; while not a few are covered 
with branching spines, which fancy may form into a forest of trees.” 
What numbers vie with the charming offspring of Flora in various beau- 
ties! some in the delicacy and variety of their colours, colours not like 
1 The genera Lumolpus, Lamprima, Rynchites. 
2 Cryptorhynchus corruscans. Germar (Insect. Spec. Nov. j. 216.) regards this 
insect as synonymous with Illiger’s Hurhinus cupratus, the description of which 
I had not seen when the Century of Insects (Linn. Trans, xii.) was written, nor 
am I able now to speak decisively on the subject.—K. 
5 Erycina Cupido, Argynnis Passiflore, Lathonia, &c. 
4 Pepsis fuscipennis, argentata, &c. 
5 The species of the genus 7roa, 
® Many of the Scarabaeidae, Dynastide, &e. 
7 Many caterpillars of Butterflies (Merian, Surinam, t. xxii. xxv. &.) and of 
Sawylies (Réaum, v. t. xii. f. 7, 8—14,). 
