178 
LIFE, IN ITS INTERMEDIATE FORMS. 
CHAPTEE XIX. 
Insecta (Insects). 
Continued. 
This Class of minute animals is so immense, that it -would 
be impossible within our limits to give a hundredth part 
of what is on record concerning them, even if we omitted 
all technical details, and confined ourselves to that which 
is popularly interesting. The study of the whole Class is 
felt to be far too large for one human life to embrace 
with any degree of completeness, and hence we hear of 
men eminent as coleopterists, lepidopterists, liymenopte- 
rists, &c., from their having devoted themselves to some 
one or other of the subordinate groups of this vast assem- 
blage. We shall just give a bird’s-eye view of these 
subdivisions, indicating here and there some of the more 
prominent points of interest for which each is distinguished. 
Chief among them stands, by universal consent, the order 
of Beetles, principally because they are the most “perfect” 
of Insects. By this term “ perfect ” as applied to struc- 
ture, which has sometimes stumbled uninitiated students, 
we do not, however, mean to imply that a House-fly or 
a Bug is not as perfectly adapted for its mode of life as a 
Beetle, nor that it is in the least degree less worthy of an 
