STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
537 
minute objects can be satisfactorily studied, and described with 
that precision and fullness which science requires. 
Insects of the kind to which these belong may be distinguished 
from .all others by their wings (see the accompanying figure, e ), 
which are long, narrow and strap-like, and in most of the species 
are fringed on both sides with long hairs like eye-lashes. Their 
mouths are also different from those of all other insects, being 
nearly intermediate between the beak or bill with which some of 
the orders of insects puncture and suc/c the fluids on which they 
subsist, and the jaws with which all the other orders gnaw the sub¬ 
stances on which they feed. These insects originally formed the 
genus Thrips , placed by Linnaeus next to the plant-lice, in the 
Order Hemiptera. But as their wings and the structure of their 
mouths is so wholly unlike that of any other insect, naturalists 
of late rank them as a distinct order, which i5 named Thysan- 
optera, i. e. fringe-winged. This order contains the single 
family Thripididje (currently written Thripidae by authors, but 
incorrectly), which is divided into seven genera by Mr. Halidav, 
whose researches in this group have been unsurpassed. About 
fifty species of these insects are known to the entomologists of 
Europe. They are all of small size, more than half of them 
being only about the twentieth of an inch in length, or less, and 
but few slightly exceed the tenth of an inch; though recently 
some have been found in Australia which are three times as large 
as any which were previously known. 
Most of the species are found in the flowers of different plants. 
They feed upon the juices, and are very injurious, especially in 
hot-houses, causing small dead spots upon the leaves and flowers 
wherever they wound them. Some of them also infest melons 
and cucumbers. One species is very injurious to the olive trees 
in Italy. Another attacks peaches and other fruit to a mis¬ 
chievous extent. But the species which appears to do the 
greatest amount of damage is the grain Thrips (7’. cerealium). 
Our first accounts of this insect are from Mr. Kirby, in 1796 
(Einnaen Transactions, iii, 246), who however supposed it to be 
the Thrips physapus of Linnaeus, until Mr. Haliday showed it to 
be distinct from that species. An excellent history of this 
[Assembly No.-217.J 35 
