707 
No. 145.] 
versant, I have throughout endeavored to treat the subject in a 
plain, familiar manner, avoiding any unnecessary resort to techni¬ 
cal language, and using no terms but such as will be found clearly 
defined in dictionaries which are in every school district in our 
State. A few words, such as antennae, thorax, abdomen, and elytra, 
which are so common in works upon insects that no one can 
expect to obtain the slightest acquaintance with this science with¬ 
out becoming familiar with them, I have employed, as it would 
savor of fastidiousness to substitute in their stead the correspond¬ 
ing English terms of horns or feelers, chest, body, and wing- 
covers, which applied to insects are modified from their common 
meaning, and the general reader will encounter much the same 
task in familiarizing himself to this modified signification that he 
will have in learning the more definite and convenient technical 
terms and their signification. 
Those portions of the report which are designed for perusal 
only when one has specimens before him of which he is desirous 
to ascertain the names, are inserted in a type of a smaller size. 
The dimensions of the several insects, larvae, &c., are expressed 
in inches and the fractional parts of an inch, 1.25 thus implying 
an inch and a quarter, 0.75 seventy-five hundredths, or three- 
fourths of an inch, &c. 
With these explanations I submit to you this report, with the 
hope that it may aid in rendering this branch of science more 
known to our citizens and available in adding to their comfort and 
welfare. 
ASA FITCH. 
Fitc/i’s Point , (East Greenwich P. 0.,) March 14, 1855. 
P. S. The Legislature having made provisions for a continu¬ 
ance of this work, as another report will be presented the coming 
year, a number of species which are in a state of forwardness for 
publication, and which we had contemplated inserting in the pre¬ 
sent document, are withheld in the crowded state of the Society’s 
volume of Transactions the present year, with the hope that we 
shall be able to obtain additional facts to render our account of 
