EXTOMOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE. 
93 
dibles, maxil]£e, and labium, of which, however, Mr. Curtis gave no 
account. He also added a summary of the genera of wasps, with 
which he was acquainted ; but all those described by St. Fargeau, 
in the Histoire Naturelle des Ins. Hyni.” were unnoticed. 
Wings of Insects. —“The isolated study of the more important 
and typical organs of animated beings, though not to be recom¬ 
mended, if regarded onlj-^ in an organographical point of view, is 
of no small importance when made the means of illustrating the 
general principles of natural history, or its more philosophical 
inquiries, which can be alluded to but briefly in articles on tribes, 
genera, and species. In this way a value may be given to the driest 
technicalities of the science, which, when philosophically understood, 
render the strictest descriptive diagnosis suggestive of important and 
interesting views. Such a subject is that of the wings of insects. 
“ The air is the appointed habitation of the insect tribes, and 
flight their chief means of motion. The mechanism by which it 
is effected is not, as in birds, dependent on the modification of 
certain of the extremities, but on a transformation of the machinery 
of that organism which has most relation with the air itself—the 
respiratory system. The wings are metamorphosed gills. The 
branchiae of the Nereids are their prototypes. These again are 
processes of the integument. The tegumentary system is charac¬ 
teristic of articulate animals. Among their highest genera it 
becomes their skeleton—an exo-skeleton—which contrasts with the 
endo-skeleton of the vertebrata. The former is the skeleton of 
the respiratory system; the latter of the nervous system. The 
former in its most perfect form appertains to creatures which pre¬ 
sent the highest development of intelligence; whilst the latter 
perfects itself in motion and the accompanying instincts. Accord¬ 
ing to the relation of their organization to one or the other of these 
points, animals are arranged in two parallel series, which in them¬ 
selves are not simple, but again subdivided into similar and repre¬ 
sentative groups. The two great series themselves may be regarded 
as representing the two kingdoms of organised nature—the animal 
and vegetative spheres, as they have been designated ; in the former 
of which the forms of beings are mainly determined by the influence 
of their organs of sensation and intelligence; in the latter, by those 
of respiration and reproduction. If such analogy be true, we should 
see evidences of its truth on a comparison of the characteristic 
