An Introduction to Entomology: Vol. 1 / or Elements of the Natural History of the Insects

AND OBEDIENT SERVANTS, THE AUTHORS.

Since the original Edition of the present work was published, a gradual and great alteration has taken place in the nomenclature of the genera, occasioned by the old ones being further subdivided according to their natural groups, and each distinguished as a genus or subgenus by its peculiar name. These names in the present Edition, in order to keep pace with the progress of the science, have been generally adopted, and some new ones introduced. The improved Index, which may be had separately by the purchasers of the former Editions, will point out from what old genera the new ones have been separated.

Yet such are the genuine charms of this branch of the study of nature, that here as well as on the continent, where, from being equally slighted, Entomology now divides the empire with her sister Botany, this obstacle would not have been sufficient to deter numbers from the study, had not another more powerful impediment existed—the want of a popular and comprehensive Introduction to the science. While elementary books on Botany have been multiplied amongst us without end and in every shape, Curtis's translation of the Fundamenta Entomologiæ , published in 1772; Yeats's Institutions of Entomology , which appeared the year after; and Barbut's Genera Insectorum , which came out in 1781—the two former in too unattractive, and the latter in too expensive a form for general readers—are the only works professedly devoted to this object, which the English language can boast.
Convinced that this was the chief obstacle to the spread of Entomology in Britain, the authors of the present work resolved to do what was in their power to remove it, and to introduce their countrymen to a mine of pleasure, new, boundless, and inexhaustible, and which, to judge from their own experience—formed in no contracted field of comparison—they can recommend as possessing advantages and attractions equal to those held forth by most other branches of human learning.