10 



INTRODUCTOKY LETTER. 



spread, and the pits which they sink to entrap the unwary, 

 we can scarcely help regarding them as aptly symbolising 

 evil demons, the enemies of man, or of impure spirits, for their 

 vices and crimes driven from the regions of light into darkness 

 and punishment.^ 



The sight indeed of a well-stored cabinet of insects will 

 bring before every beholder not conversant with them, forms 

 in endless variety, which before he would not have thought it 

 possible could exist in nature, resembling nothing that the 

 other departments of the animal kingdom exhibit, and ex- 

 ceeding even the wildest fictions of the most fertile imagina- 

 tion. Besides prototypes of beauty and symmetry, there in 

 miniature he will be amused to survey (for the most horrible 

 creatures when deprived of the power of injury become 

 sources of interest and objects of curiosity), to use the words 

 of our great poet, 



all prodigious things 



Abominable, unutterable, and worse 



Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd, 



Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeeras dire. 



But the pleasures of a student of the science to which I am 

 desirous of introducing you are far from being confined to 

 such as result from an examination of the exterior form and 

 decorations of insects : for could these, endless as they seem, 

 be exhausted, or, wonderful as they are, lose their interest, 

 yet new sources, exuberant in amusement and instruction, 

 may be opened, which will furnish an almost infinite fund for 

 his curiosity to draw upon. The striking peculiarity and 

 variety of structure which they exhibit in their instruments 

 of nutrition, motion, and oviposition ; in their organs of sen- 

 sation, generation, and the great fountains of vitality, — 

 indeed their whole system, anatomically considered, will open 

 a world of wonders to you with which you will not soon be 

 satiated, and during your survey of which you will at every 

 step feel disposed to exclaim with the Roman naturalist — 



In these beings so minute, and as it were such non-entities, 



1 This idea seems to have been present to the mind of Linn^ and Fabricius, 

 when they gave to insects such names as Belzehub, Belial, Titan, Typhon, Nimrod, 

 Geryon, and the like. 



