Excerpt from Synopsis of the Families and Genera of the Hymenoptera of America, North of Mexico: Together With a Catalogue of the Described Species, and Bibliography

The study of the Hymenoptera of our country has not kept pace with some of the other orders from the want of an introductory work in our own language. Westwood's invaluable Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects, while partly supplying the want, is insufficient, and at the present expensive and difficult to obtain. The want is especially felt by those who have not access to large scientific libraries, and many are discouraged from attempting the study by the difficulties and expense of acquiring the necessary litera ture, with the added difficulties of the foreign languages.

The writer has been frequently appealed to and requested to indi cate such books as will enable a beginner to separate even the fami lies and genera. The impossibility of obtaining any works in the English language, and the almost equally hopeless chance of deter mining the species, have doubtless deterred many from aiding in the development of the study of probably the most interesting order of insects.

Other extensive orders, as the Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, have numerous votaries from the aids furnished by elementary works on classification, and until similar assistance is given, very little progress can be expected in the study of the Hymenoptera, notwithstanding the fact that there is no order of insects more extensive and varied in structure, and certainly none more interesting in the habits of its members. Students are so few, in fact, that the greater part of the material collected together in the larger families has been very im perfectly studied, and our knowledge of the characters is very in complete, so that years of careful study will be necessary before a classification can be produced that will be approximately complete.

As a step in that direction, however, it has been suggested that the publication of a series of synoptic tables giving the leading charac ters, as far as known, of the families and genera, would prove a. Great aid to the student and possibly induce many to collect and study these interesting creatures.

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