From leaf-hoppers, dragonflies, wasps, moths, thrips, stinkbugs, crickets, and beetles -this lush hardcover field guide is an essential item to add to your book shelves. There are extensive details on how adult insects differ from other arthropods —for this matter they have two pairs of wings; three distinct major body divisions -head, thorax, and abdomen- and never more than three pairs of legs (a pair to each thoracic segment).
The Insect Guide - Orders and Major Families of North American Insects, by Ralph B. Swain, at the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, US Dept. of Agriculture. This specific edition was published in 1948, for Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY. Includes bewildering illustrations by Suzan N. Swain. 454 plates, 330 in full color which cover 251 insect species in the US and Canada.
“One who wishes to distinguish different kinds of insects first must know how to tell them from the various animals with which they commonly are confused. Almost any small creature with more than 4 legs mistakenly may be called an insect or 'bug', and the immature stages of many insects too often are miscalled 'worms'. “Moths And Butterflies: Order Lepidoptera” - pp 178-179.
“About 670,000 different kinds of insects have been described since the days of Linnaeus, the inventor of our present system of naming insects, and the total number of species that eventually will be discovered and described is conservatively estimated to be 2,000,000. In short, there are more species of insects than of all other animals taken together…So let us look at the world of insects, seeing only the later elements of its composition, and hope that in so doing some who hitherto have been appalled and confused by the sheer numbers and diversity of insects will have a pleasurable experience akin to that of the mountaineer who has achieved the summit.” Above excerpt is taken from the Introduction, which also includes a segment from “Chapter One: Is It An Insect?”.
Although an extensive guide, we do recommend furthering your studies by visiting entomologytoday.org.