64 Mr. W. S. Macteay on the Structure of the Tarsus 
characteristic, we may daily perceive that accurate observation 
remains still a desideratum, merely because we are too apt to 
despise minutie, and too ready to adopt the recorded obser- 
vations of others as true, for no other reason than because they 
are so recorded. A curious instance of this facility in trusting 
to the observations of others I shall proceed to explain; not 
merely because it has led myself as well as all other modern ento- 
mologists into very inaccurate descriptions, but because a system 
of arrangement, and that system the very one which is most pre- 
valent on the Continent at the present day, has been founded 
among coleopterous insects upon such false descriptions. 
Geoffroy appears to have been the first to observe that the 
joints of the tarsi varied in number among Coleoptera, and also - 
to have been the first to make use of this variation in forming a 
system of arrangement for the order*. In alluding to this system 
of Geoffroy, M. Latreille says, ** L'ouvrage de ce celébre natu- 
raliste est peut-être celui qui a le plus contribué aux progrès de 
l'Entomologie, du moins en France. On lui doit la découverte 
du caractère important, pris du nombre des articles des tarses, 
caractère qui a par sa constance une plus grande valeur que celui 
que fournissent les antennes." (Lat. Hist. Nat. des Crust.et Ins. ii. 
300.) M. Dumeril improved upon Geoffroy's sketch ; while 
M. Latreille and the other French naturalists fancied that they 
had found a key to a natural arrangement, the honour of which 
would indisputably belong to France. In the Genera Insectorum 
of M. Latreille, a work which has occasioned the tarsal system 
to be generally adopted not merely in France but throughout 
Europe*, we find that the great order of Coleoptera is divided into 
* De Geer, Mém. pour P Hist. des Ins. vol. iv. Do. pé 
+ Until the publication of the first number of the Annulosa Javanica, no English 
entomologist had so far broken through the trammels of this system as to arrange insects 
in opposition to it, except Dr. Leach, who in the 3rd volume of the Zoological Miscel- 
lany 
