DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 179 



the probable instruments of sensation. They are so voluminous in their 

 orders, as well as in the genera belonging to the class (this single class con- 

 taining, perhaps, as many species as are known to the whole twenty-four 

 classes of the vegetable kingdom), that our time will allow us to do little 

 more than instance the names of a few of the most common and familiar 

 kinds, under the ordinal arrangement. The orders are seven ; all insects 

 being included under the technical names of coleopterous, hemipterous, 

 lepidopterous, neuropterous, hymenopterous, dipterous, and apterous ; or, to 

 exchange the Greek for English terms, under those of crustaceous-winged, 

 half-crustaceous-winged, scaly-winged, reticulate or net-work-winged, mem- 

 branaceous-winged, two-winged, and wingless. From all which it is ob- 

 vious that the ordinal character of insects is derived from the general idea of 

 wings ; to which I may add, that under this general idea, while the indivi- 

 duals of the last order are destitute of wings, and those of the last but one 

 are only possessed of two wings, the individuals of the preceding five orders 

 have four wings each, though not particularly specified in their ordinal names. 



The COLEOPTEROUS or crustaceous-winged insects, constituting the first 

 ORDER, are by far the most numerous ; and, as the ordinal term imports, em- 

 brace all those whose wings are of a shelly or crustaceous hardness ; and are 

 subdistinguished by the nature of their antennas as being clubbed at the end, 

 thread-like or bristly. Among the more familiar of this order, I may men- 

 tion the scarabaeus or beetle-kinds, a very numerous race, equally distin- 

 guished by the metallic lustre of their wing-shells, and their attachment to 

 dunghills, and other animal filth. The dermestes or leather-eater, the larves 

 or grubs of one species of which are found so perpetually to prey on the 

 bindings of books, and sometimes even on the shelves of libraries. The 

 coccinella or lady-bird ; the curculio or weavil, the larve of which is found 

 so frequently in our filbert and hazel-nuts, and which secretes such a quantity 

 of bile as to give the nut a bitter taste to a considerable extent beyond the 

 place in which it is immediately seated. 



The ptinus, producing in one of its species the death-watch, is another 

 insect belonging to this order, whose solemn and measured strokes, repeated 

 in the dead of the night, are so alarming to the fearful and superstitious ; but 

 which, as we formerly noticed, merely proceed from the animal's striking its 

 little horny frontlet against the bedpost it inhabits, as a call of love to the 

 other sex. The lampyris or glow-worm, the cantharis or Spanish-fly, and 

 the forficula or earwig : the last of which is characterized by the singularity 

 of its brooding over its own young like a hen, and only leaving them at night, 

 when it roams abroad in quest of food for their support. A few of these, as 

 the lady-bird and earwig, are by M. Cuvier taken away from the present 

 order, and, with several of the ensuing, as the cockroach, locust, and grass- 

 hopper, carried to a new order, which he has named ornithoptera. 



The second order of insects, entitled hemiptera or half-crustaceous, 

 and by some writers rhyngota, has the two upper of the four wings some- 

 what hard or shelly, though less so than the preceding, while the two lower 

 wings are for the most part soft and membranaceous. To this order belong 

 the coccus or cochineal insect ; the blatta or cockroach, of which the chaffer 

 is a species ; the gryllus or locust, of which one species is the little cheerful 

 chirping cricket ; the cicada or grasshopper, still more celebrated for its mu- 

 sical powers than the cricket ; and the cimex or bug, celebrated also, but for 

 powers which you will, perhaps, spare me from detailing. 



The THIRD ORDER OF INSECTS, COLEOPTERA, Or SCALY-WINGED, COntaittS but 



three genera or kinds ; and these are, the papilio or butterfly, the phalaena or 

 common moth, and the sphinx or hawk-moth ; which last has a near resem- 

 blance to both the others, and flies with a humming noise, chiefly in the 

 morning and evening, as the moth flies chiefly in the evening and at night, 

 and the butterfly only in the daytime. They have all a general resemblance 

 to each other, and feed equally on the nectary of flowers : the antennas of 

 the butterflies are mostly knobbed or clubbed at the tip ; those of the moths 

 are moniliform, those of the sphinxes tapering. 



