two wings only. In this order ranks the corn mon fly, the gnat, and many others.

ORDER VII.

Apiera.-It consists of such insects as are entirely destitute of wings; as spiders, centi tipedes, fleas, and many others.

Lest yot should be led into an error in the beginning of your career, I must inform you of a few deviations from these general rules. Some of the coleopterous insects have no other wings than the horny sheaths called clytra: and there are a few species, in which one sex is winged, and the other without wings; but they must not, on that account, be referred to the seventh order.

From the multitudes of insects that swarm in almost every situation, the ancients adopted the absurd opinion that they were nourished, and brought into life, by the matter in which they are found : thus, they supposed that flesh bred maggots; and dirt, those loathsome insects that are seldom seen but in the retreats of poverty or sloth. The enlightened philosophy of the present day has discarded such an unfiundcd notion, and clearly shown that all animals derive their being from parents of a like nature as themselves. They adopted another error,

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