INTRODUCTION. 



Although the study of the anatomy of insects was formerly 

 cultivated with great assiduity by such men as Swammerdam, 

 Malpighi, Lyonet, Straus Durckheim, and more recently by 

 Leydig, it is a science which has never found a home in 

 England; moreover, the improvements in the compound micro- 

 scope, which have made a new epoch in biological studies, have 

 rather checked than advanced the study of insect anatomy, by 

 diverting investigation into what appeared for a time more 

 fertile fields of research. In the last twenty years, however, 

 many remarkable monographs have appeared in France, 

 Germany, and Russia, and our knowledge has been greatly 

 advanced ; yet, extraordinary as it may appear, there is no 

 really competent treatise on insect anatomy, in English, of 

 more recent date than Newport's article ' Insecta ' in Todd's 

 Cyclopaedia (i8j6). If we wish to make ourselves acquainted 

 with the researches of late years, it is necessary to consult 

 many memoirs in several languages— Graber's work, ' Die 

 Insecten,' to a certain extent, is available to those conversant 

 with German, and Miall and Denny have given us an excellent 

 memoir on the cockroach, which is, however, insufficient as an 



