_Our Authorities._--In a book which puts forward no scientific pretensions, the book of an unlearned writer dedicated to unlearned readers, we do not hesitate to confess that our method of study was very indirect. If we had commenced with subtle classificators or minute anatomists, or with dry manuals of instruction, perhaps we should have been checked at the first step. But we approached this science on its attractive side--through the great historians of the insect, who have united the delineation of its habits with the description of its organs. Our mind had received a strong and decisive blow (if we may so speak) from the hooks of the two Hubers on the Bees and the Ants. The impression was so great, that thereafter we read with interest what one does not usually read continuously, Réaumur's six quarto volumes of _Mémoires_--an immortal book, which must always be a standard authority. Neither the contemptuous reaction of Buffon, nor the anatomical works, of superior exactness on special points, which have since been produced, should cause it to be forgotten. Réaumur was, as it were, the central point of our studies, and from him we went back to the illustrious masters of the seventeenth century, Swammerdam and Malpighi; next, we descended to those of the eighteenth, the Lyonnets, Bonnets, and Geers; finally, to our modern writers, Latreille, Duméril, Lepelletier, Blanchard,--to the fertile and audacious school of the Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires and the Audouins, gloriously supported by Ampère and Goethe. While profiting by the noble treatises which sum up the main results of the science, like those of Lacordaire, we by no means neglected the admirable monographs of the present, century,--those of Léon Dufour (scattered through the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, and other collections), the grand work of Walckenaër on the Spiders, the colossal labour of Strauss on the Cockchafer--a monument of the first class, which can only be compared to Lyonnet's treatise on the Caterpillar. As for details drawn from travellers, we shall hereafter have an opportunity of referring to them. We shall also acknowledge our debt to foreign writers,--to Kirby, Smeathman, Lund, and others. For the anatomy of the insect, as for general anatomy, we cannot too strongly recommend the admirable and usefully enlarged specimens prepared by our excellent master, Dr. Auzoux. [Illustration] NOTE 3.--Book i., Chap. iii. _On Insect Embryos, Invisible Animalcules, Infusorias as the Predecessors or Forerunners of the Insect, &c._--The work of the _vermets_ has been observed, in Sicily, by M. de Quatrefages.--As for the microscopic fossils, the infusorias, &c., their great _coup de théâtre_ has been Ehrenberg's discovery. See his _Mémoires_ in the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, Second Series, vols, i., ii., vi., vii., viii. In volume i., p. 134, for 1834, he specifies the point at which Cuvier left the science, and how much his discovery has added to it.