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II. On the Structure of the Tarsus in the Tetramerous and Tri- 
merous Coleoptera of the French Entomologists. By W. S. Mac- 
Leay, Esq. A.M. F.L.S. Communicated by the Zoological Club 
of the Linnean Society. 
Read February 1, 1825. 
Eacu succeeding day proves more and more the importance to 
Natural History of the utmost particularity of detail. This science 
is one in which correct general views can only be constructed 
on a minuteness of scrutiny which may be tiresome, nay, to some 
minds, even disgusting, but can never be unprofitable. The 
collector who consults books merely that he may be enabled to 
attach a label to some object in his museum, is as much interested 
in our observations being minute, as the naturalist whose study it 
is to ascertain the affinities and analogies which connect together 
all organized beings. It is only, indeed, upon minute observa- 
tion that accurate descriptions can ever be founded ; and it is 
therefore impossible for such persons as will not deign to de- 
scend into details to attain even mediocrity as naturalists. The 
entomologist then may say, on behalf of the minute objects which 
he studies and the minuteness with which he describes them, that 
unless a similar minuteness of observation be carried into the 
study of Mammalia and Birds, even in these important classes of 
the creation nothing that is certain as to affinities, nothing that 
is definite in nomenclature, can ever be attained. Yet even in 
Entomology, a science of which strict scrutiny is as it were the 
charac- 
