Illustration always appeared to me a very important part of the work, so that readers might start with the knowledge of the appearance of the insects under consideration, gained by a glance at the accompanying figure, without having the trouble of trying to form a kind of “mind picture” from the descriptions given, often very unlike the true object.[29] At first—in the small beginning—the numbers needed were also small, and I think the little stock of figure blocks with which I started, and for which I was indebted to the kind courtesy of a friend, amounted to _one dozen!_ This matter, however, I set right as soon as possible by the purchase from Messrs. Blackie & Sons, of Glasgow, of electros of most of the beautiful wood engravings given in Curtis’s “Farm Insects,” under an agreement that the accommodation was granted on condition of my using the figures only in my own publications. Some of the illustrations I drew myself on the blocks, and as time went on, and infestations, little or not at all entered on before, required illustration, I engaged the valuable assistance of two brothers,[30] which was continued thenceforward throughout the work. It appears to me that it is hardly possible to exceed the beauty of their work, whether in characteristic representation or in precise and accurate details. I have had great pleasure in the entomological approval which has been bestowed upon it. Illustrations from other sources have of course been used, always, so far as I am aware, most carefully acknowledged; and so far as has been in my power, I have endeavoured that the illustration of each infestation should show the insect (where it was possible to do so) in each of its successive stages of life, as of the caterpillar or maggot (scientifically the _larva_); the chrysalis (_pupa_); and the perfect insect, butterfly, beetle, sawfly, &c., as the case might be. This matter is of great importance agriculturally, for how else (it may be asked) in common circumstances, excepting by a good, plain illustration, is a farmer or fruit-grower to know what the connection is between the grubs and maggots which he finds underground or on his trees and the moths or beetles which he may notice in his fields or orchards. To give a single instance, how seldom the grey, cylindrical, legless grubs of the Daddy Longlegs are known to have anything to do with the large, gnat-like, two-winged flies which are to be seen floating over our grass-fields in legions where the larvæ have been destroying underground. And so the work went on, and I believe that I may say that—from the great amount of useful information contributed, together with my own co-operation in entomological verification, adding requisite details, publishing the year’s communications, and distributing them to my contributors—it answered fairly the purpose for which it was set on foot. And year by year we gained knowledge till we possessed serviceable information on the main points, both of habits and means of prevention of the greater number of our really seriously injurious farm, orchard, and forest pests of Britain.