Observations on a mode practised in Italy of excluding the common house-fly from apartments / by William Spence.

  • Spence, William, 1783-1860
Date:
[1836]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on a mode practised in Italy of excluding the common house-fly from apartments / by William Spence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [From the Transactions of the Entomological Society.] I. Observations on a Mode practised in Italy of excluding the Common House-fly from Apartments. By William Spence, Esq., F.R.S., &jc., Honorary Member of the Entomological Society. [Read April 7, 1834.] habits, manners and instincts of insects, theii anatomy and physiology, and their useful or noxious properties, will doubtless attract a large share of the attention of the members of the Entomo¬ logical Society, without inducing them to underrate, as has some¬ times been done, the importance of the systematic department of the science, on which all accurate information respecting its objects must be founded. Knowledge as to the structure, habits and ceconomy of insects ought, indeed, to be the grand and ultimate aim of entomo¬ logy ; but this knowledge can be neither acquired nor difhised with¬ out systematic classification, wThich is the dictionaiy that must enable us duly to read the great book of nature, and to which, therefore, so long as that dictionary still remains so incomplete, even the largest portion of the entomologist s labours may be justly guen, Awhile, at the same time, no fact, however trifling, relating to the habits and ceconomy of the objects of his study is suffered to be lost, the two great branches of the science, system and the natural history of in¬ sects (taken in its largest sense), being made to go hand in hand, and mutually to support each other. Xo one department of the natural history of insects, which has B