Outlines of Entomology

Abstract

THERE was a time, perhaps it is not entirely past, when entomology was among the least of the biological sciences ; when the cockroach was held to epitomize the class ; and when a specialist on the Ctenophora might be credited with a knowledge of zoology, but scarcely a specialist on the Insecta. Yet insects have provided the material for most of the biological theory of the past fifty years: sex determination, biological races and species formation, mutation and heredity, bioluminescence, mechanisms of behaviour, biological oxidations, the inheritance of acquired characters, adaptive coloration, theories of population, the physiological action of genes- these are a few of the subjects which owe much to the diversity of insects and the unrivalled opportunities they offer for studying the workings of the living organism. The utilization of this material in many fields of physiology and biochemistry has scarcely begun. Much of insect physiology still consists in confirming upon insects what is already known from studies of higher animals. But the tissues of insects are so accessible, and experiments can be made upon them with such facility, as to encourage the hope that there are many more fundamental problems in biology the analysis of which may be pressed further and with greater ease upon insects than upon other forms.

Outlines of Entomology

By Dr. A. D. Imms. Pp. vii + 184. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1942.) 12s 6d. net.