OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



41 



posed that from these statements, many of them drawn up by 

 farmers who had lost entire crops by the insect, which they 

 profess to have examined in every stage, the requisite inform- 

 ation might have been acquired. So far, however, was this 

 from being the case, that many of the writers seemed ignorant 

 whether the insect be a moth, a fly, or what they term a bug. 

 And though from the concurrent testimony of several, its 

 being a two- winged fly seemed pretty accurately ascertained, 

 no intelligible description was given from which any naturalist 

 could infer to what genus it belonged, or whether it was a 

 known species. With regard to the history of its propagation 

 and economy the statements were so various and contradictory, 

 that though he had such a mass of materials before him, Sir 

 Joseph Banks was unable to reach any satisfactory conclusion.^ 



Nothing can more incontrovertibly demonstrate the im- 

 portance of studying Entomology as a science than this 

 fact. Those observations, to which thousands of unscientific 

 suflerers proved themselves incompetent, would have been 

 readily made by one entomologist well versed in his science. 

 He would at once have determined the order and genus of 

 the insect, and whether it was a known or new species ; and 

 in a twelvemonth at furthest he would have ascertained in 

 what manner it made its attacks, and whether it were 

 possible that it might be transmitted along with grain into a 

 foreign country ; and on these solid data he could have 

 satisfactorily pointed out the best mode of eradicating the 

 pest, or preventing the extension of its ravages. 



But it is not merely in travellers and popular observers 

 that the want of a systematic knowledge of Entomology 

 is so deplorable. A great portion of the labours of the 

 profoundest naturalists has been from a similar cause lost to 

 the world. Many of the insects concerning which Beaumur 

 and Bonnet have recorded the most interesting circum- 

 stances, cannot, from their neglect of system, be at this day 

 ascertained.'^ The former, as Beckmann^ states on the 



1 The American Entomologist Say, was the first who satisfactorily determined 

 the species and genus of the insect in question. Say on Cecidomyia Destructor, in 

 Tourn. Acad. Nat. Sc. Philadelph., i.; and Kirby in Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist.,\. 



2 No one knew Reaumur's Aheille Tapissiere, until Latreille, happily com- 

 bining system with attention to the economy of insects, proved it to be a new- 

 species — his Megachile Papaveris. — Hist, de Fourmis, 297. 



3 Bihliotheh. vii. 310. 



