xii First Report on Economic Zoology . 
Group F. — Animals which concern man as being destructive to his 
worked up products of art and industry, such as ( A ) his 
various works, buildings, larger constructions and habitations ; 
(B) furniture, books, drapery and clothing ; ( C ) his food and 
his stores. 
Examples. — White ants ; wood-eating larvae ; clothes 
moths, weevils, acari and marine borers. 
Group G. — Animals which are known as “ beneficials ” on account of 
their being destructive to or checking the increase of the 
injurious animals classed under Groups D, E and F. 
Examples. — Certain carnivorous and insectivorous birds, 
reptiles and amphibia ; parasitic and predaceous insects, acari, 
myriapoda, etc. 
The above is a complete classification of animals in their economic 
relation to man, and proceeds from the simpler relations of primitive man 
and the animals around him to the more complex relations of civilised 
man with his endless arts and industries and circumscribed conditions. 
It is, however, convenient in the treatment of the subject, whether in 
a Museum Collection or in a Handbook, to deal with the last group 
(Group G), the beneficial animals, in immediate connection with the 
injurious animals by the destruction of which they render service. The 
diseases of injurious animals caused by parasitic plants such as fungi and 
bacteria are naturally connected also with this subject of “ beneficials.” 
But in the artificial scheme which we have decided for practical reasons 
to accept, they are omitted, and the student is referred to the botanist and 
pathologist for the treatment of these vegetable organisms. 
A similar treatment of Group E, namely, those animals which injure 
other animals in the conservation of which man is interested, would be 
convenient in some ways. But it is not followed here for two reasons, 
firstly, because it is convenient rather to associate this group with the 
animals causing disease or death to man, the animals of the two groups 
being in many cases identical or closely related, and secondly, because the 
zoologist has to take cognizance of a further large and important series of 
injurious animals, namely, those which destroy or injure the cultivated or 
wild plants in the life of which man is interested. 
It is obvious that the subject-matter of Economic Botany could be 
set forth in a series of groups exactly parallel to those which we have 
employed for reviewing the subject-matter of Economic Zoology ; we 
should merely have to substitute the word “plant ” for “ animal” in the 
groups given above, and to use the appropriate words in the place of 
“ captured ” and “ slaughtered.” 
A review of the contents of each of the main Groups A to G is given 
below. It is to be noted that the animals of Group G will, as explained 
above, be placed in our Museum series (and in any further treatment of 
the subject based on this prodromus) alongside of the particular forms of 
injurious animals to which they are hostile. 
It is also found convenient in a subject which has such definite local 
interest and importance as has that of Economic Zoology to sub-divide 
every group into a series of sections corresponding to large geographical 
areas. For the purposes of the Natural History Museum, and with the 
