Excerpt from A Contribution Toward an Encyclopedia of Insect Anatomy

At the time oi his sudden death, on September 4, 1962, Robert E. Snodgrass was working on a book we might call An Encyclopedia of Insect Anatomy. His notes and correspondence suggest several possible titles, but this one seems most appropriate for the material. To judge from the list of terms he had compiled for the letters A to D, I would estimate that the work was only somewhere between 10 and 20 percent completed. Most manuscripts would be unsalvageable when in such an early stage, but this one need not be thrown away. An encyclopedia may be considered as a dictionary in which definitions of maximum brevity are replaced by essays on the various terms. In this sense, each of the essays Dr. Snodgrass had written may be considered as complete - the work is incomplete only in the sense that he had progressed only a short way down the list of projected essays. Hence the title chosen for this publication.

In consultation with Mrs. Snodgrass and others it was decided not to attempt completing the work, because who besides Snodgrass could write Snodgrass's Encyclopedia? The essays are published almost word for word from the original manuscript. However, this was preliminary manuscript which did require some editorial emen dations. NO doubt, if he had lived, he would have done more revi sion - such was his habit - but I have kept changes to a minimum in order not to alter the author's meaning. Actually he had already done some rewriting, as Shown by the fact that there were three versions of Metamorphosis, two of Pleuron, etc. In such cases the most extensive version is used here; in some cases additions to it are taken from the less extensive versions. N O attempt was made to make the several essays stylistically consistent with one another; thus some begin with derivation of the word and/or a definition; others do not.

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