Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/326

 314 INSECTS INSURANCE among the social insects, the young are fed by the neuters and females. For details, see Kirby and Spence's "Introduction to Ento- mology." The relations of insects to the rest of organic nature are very interesting and im- portant. Most insects derive their food from the vegetable kingdom, to which they are both injurious and beneficial ; by their simple agency not only is a limit set to the increase of plants, but their preservation is due in many instances to insect operations. Myriads of larvre feed upon the roots, leaves, flowers, fruits, wood, and seeds of plants, not sparing the grains and vegetables most useful to man; the work of Dr. Harris on the " Insects Injurious to Vege- tation " gives ample details on this point as far as the northern portion of the United States is concerned, and many of his observations are given in this work in the articles relating to these destructive creatures. On the other hand, fecundation in plants is often promoted by insects; butterflies, bees, wasps, flies, and beetles convey the pollen to the female organs, and thus impregnation is effected in many cases where it would otherwise be unlikely to occur. Insects afford food for each other, for spiders, for many fresh-water fishes, amphibians, rep- tiles, birds, and mammals; and the last two, with man himself, are infested with many parasitic insects. (See EPIZOA.) The direct advantages derived from insects by man are not a few ; many larvso of beetles, grasshop- pers, and locusts, South American ants, &c., are occasionally used as food by various savage tribes; the bee supplies honey and wax, the coccus manna and cochineal, the Spanish fly a well known blistering drug, the gall insects a valuable astringent, the silkworm a most valu- able and beautiful material for clothing, &c. ; and the larva? of flies and many beetles are useful in removing decomposing animal mat- ters. Insects are found everywhere, even on the surface of the ocean (hydromttradce), but they are essentially animals of the air ; though a few may be seen in winter, most are active only in the other seasons; the winter is passed in a state of hibernation, either as eggs, larva?, pupa?, or in a few instances as perfect insects ; those of tropical regions are the largest, most numerous, and most gorgeously arrayed; they have been found within eight degrees of the north pole, but their geographical distribution has not received the attention it deserves; some are restricted within narrow limits, while others exist almost everywhere. In- sects of a former geological age are found in amber, a fossil resin, in most cases coming very near existing forms, and sometimes of living genera; the number of species thus found is considerable, and, though pertaining only to such as dwelt in woods or on trees, it may reasonably be concluded that then, as now, the insect world was well filled; the beetles are well represented, the hymenoptera very abundant, the lepidoptera exceedingly rare, the diptera and neuroptera very numer- ous, and the orthoptera and hemiptera not common. Insect impressions have been de- scribed in the calcareous formations, especially such as might have been made by aquatic larva and insects ; Dr. Hitchcock describes footmarks in the sandstones of the Connecticut valley as having been made probably by several genera of insects ; and Prof. C. F. Hartt has discovered near St. John, N. B., fossil remains of insects in the upper Devonian formation, which he considers the oldest known. For the systematic classification of insects, and the history of the science, see ENTOMOLOGY. nsESSORKS, the perching birds, the most numerous of the class, differing from each other greatly in many respects, but agreeing in having three toes directed forward and one backward, neither armed with talons nor webbed. They have been divided by the Ger- man ornithologists into the suborders itrisores, in which the hind toe may be turned forward, like the humming birds, swifts, and goatsuck- ers, with a feeble voice; clamatores, noisy, like the kingfishers and the flycatchers; and oscines, singing birds, in which the larynx has five pairs of muscles for the production of song. The last includes the thrushes, war- blers, swallows, mocking bird, nightingale, lark, finches, sparrows, crows, and other birds noted either for their song or powers of mimicry or articulation. nsmtltl U;, a town of Prussia, in the prov- ince of East Prussia, capital of a circle of the same name, 53 m. E. of Konigsberg, on the railway to Gumbinnen, and at the confluence of the Angerap and Inster rivers, forming the Pregel ; pop. in 1871, 7,185. There are manu- factories of beet sugar, wool, cotton, linen, earthenware, and leather, and an important trade in corn and linseed. The castle of In- sterhurg was founded by the Teutonic knights. INSURANCE, in law, a contract whereby an insurer engages, for a consideration which is called a premium, to insure a certain party against loss of or injury to certain property by certain perils. The word peril here means not the danger but the happening of the event which was feared. "When the contract is in writing, the instrument is called a policy of in- surance. Marine insurance is the insurance of maritime property against maritime perils. Fire insurance is the insurance of houses or goods against fire. Life insurance (of which accident insurance, of recent origin, is properly a branch) will be separately treated under its own name. I. MAEINB INSUKANCE was wholly unknown to the Greeks and Eomans, and to oriental nations. Chief Justice Coke (6 Rep. 47), about 1588, notices the practice of insu- rance as a mere novelty, and the first English statute which recognizes it is 43 Elizabeth, c. 12 (1601). But the 66th section of the laws of Wisby (a maritime code published probably about 1250) speaks distinctly of it. Some sup- pose this to be an interpolation ; but it is at least possible that the practice of insurance was