Vi PREFACE. 



how can he look for sympathy in a pursuit unknown 

 to the world, except as indicative of littleness of 

 mind ? 



Yet such are the genuine charms of this branch of 

 the study of nature, that here as well as on the Con- 

 tinent, where, from being equally slighted. Ento- 

 mology now divides the empire with her sister 

 Botany, this obstacle would not have been sufficient 

 to deter numbers from the study, had not another 

 more powerful impediment existed, — the want of a 

 popular and comprehensive Introduction to the 

 science. While elementary books on Botany have 

 been multipHed amongst us without end and in every 

 shape, Curtis's translation of the Fundamenta Ento- 

 mologice, published in 177^? Ye'eit^hlmtitutions of En- 

 tomology, which appeared the year after, and Barbut's 

 Genera Insectorum, which came out in 1781, the 

 two former in too unattractive, and the latter in too 

 expensive a form for general readers, — are the only 

 works professedly devoted to this object which the 

 English language can boast. 



Convinced that this was the chief obstacle to the 

 spread of Entomology in Britain, the authors of the 

 present work resolved to do what w-as in their power 

 to remove it, and to introduce their countrymen to 

 a mine of pleasure, new, boundless, and inexhaust- 

 ible, and which, to judge from tlieir own experience, 

 — -formed in no contracted field of comparison,— 

 they can recommend as possessing advantages and 

 attractions equal to those held forth by most other 

 branches of human learning. 



The next question was, in what way they should 

 attempt to accomplish this intention. If they had 

 contented themselves with the first suggestion that 



