THE YOUNG 



NATUEA.LIST. 



89 



it is, in many parts of Britain known as 

 Haychat, or Grasschat. 



Abroad it is found in many parts of 

 Europe, in parts of Africa, and also I believe 

 in some parts of Asia. 



Nest. — The nest is placed on or very 

 near the ground, on heaths, waste places, or 

 in grass fields, and is composed of dried 

 grass stems, the coarser on the outside, and 

 finer ones inside, with bits of moss or wool. 

 It is loosely constructed, and rather large for 

 the size of the bird, though artfully concealed 

 and difficult to find. It is begun soon after 

 the birds arrive in this country. 



Eggs. — Five or six eggs are laid, bluish- 

 green. In colour they resemble those of the 

 Hedgesparrow, but are generally rather 

 greener, and the surface rather more 

 polished ; they are laid about the middle of 

 May. 



Varieties. — Very rarely the eggs have 

 faint red-brown spots at the larger end. 



BRITISH WINGED INSECTS. 



By S. L. MosLEY. 

 Now that we have commenced the 

 "Illustrated Catalogue of British Insects," 

 (a life long task, which we may not live to 

 see completed) it will not be out of place 

 to give a few notes on the different orders, 

 and the position they should occupy in 

 relation to each other. A series of articles 

 on the various orders, appeared in the first 

 volume, but it was of a general nature only, 

 and more of an introductory character than 

 what I now propose. Every one desires to 

 see a perfectly natural arrangement, in 

 which each order, family, genus, or species 

 shall be placed just between the two orders, 

 families &c., to which it is most allied. 

 Such an arrangement would necessarily be 

 a circular one, and is an impossibility, from 

 the fact that groups or individual species 

 have not been formed in this way, but rather 

 going off from a central point as a tree 



branches. Nevertheless one arrangement 

 is necessarily more natural than another. 

 Thus, to place birds between, say insects 

 and starfishes is evidently not so natural, as 

 to place them between two other groups of 

 backboned animals. Though we cannot 

 therefore arrange all living beings in one un- 

 broken succession, each one being more 

 closely allied with those preceding and 

 succeeding it than with any others : we can 

 as we have said make our system more or 

 less natural. In any such arrangement 

 there will always be more or less diversity 

 of opinion, as one mind will give greater 

 importance to one organ or organs, and 

 another to others. As knowledge increases, 

 and the real value of the various organs be- 

 come better known, such diversities of 

 opinion will become fewer, and of less 

 importance, and it may be that eventually 

 all Naturalists will agree on such points. In 

 the meantime, each Young Naturalist must 

 think for themselves, and endeavour by 

 adding to the general stock of knowledge, to 

 hasten that desirable agreement. The 

 following pages contain an enlargement of a 

 paper I had the honour to read at a meeting 

 of the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomol- 

 ogical Society, and which was subsequently 

 published in the Naturalist. 



Authors disagree at present even as to the 

 number of distinct orders into which insects 

 ought to be divided. Some restrict the 

 number to seven, viz : — 



Hemiptera 



Orthoptera 



Coleoptera 



Nemoptera 



Lepidoptera 



Hymenoptera 



Diptera 



Others divide some of these groups into 

 two. Thus the Hemiptera and Neuroptera 

 are both split into two orders by writers of 

 perhaps equal authority to those who com- 

 bine them. The division between these 



