604 TAXONOMY. 



tural, and worse than any of his predecessors. In the second group of 

 beetles we find the genera Staphylinus, Forjtcula, Meloe, and Neci/dalis. 

 De Geer had already shown that the earwig does not belong to the 

 beetles. But, indeed, if cockroaches, grasshoppers, and locusts are to 

 be classed among the beetles, as Geoffroy has done, the earwig may 

 very well be placed there. What a mixture is not the fourth order 

 even ! It was very necessary that an active mind should occupy itself 

 to separate all these errors from the truth, and to raise entomology 

 from its existing state of childhood to its age of manhood. 



342. 



This genius was found amongst the Germans; it was John Christian 

 Fabricius, who was born in 1748 at Tondern, in the Grand Duchy of 

 Sleswig : he died upon the 3rd of March., 1808, as Professor at Kiel. 

 It was indeed time that the Germans should exhibit themselves as a 

 people that loved science and knew how to promote it, for all their 

 neighbours had preceded them with celebrated examples ; but it soon 

 displayed itself in a manner superior to any of the rest, as the most 

 comprehensive, active, profoundest, and most zealous for science. 



His division, which was first published in the year 1775, in his 

 Systema Entomologiee, followed quite a new path, the groups of it 

 being founded upon organs which had never yet been used by authors 

 as the principles of subdivision. These were the oral organs. 

 Fabricius defined the orders (which he incorrectly called classes) by 

 their differences, and in the course of his progressive investigation he 

 established thirteen equivalent groups. Both his first and last sub- 

 divisions we will here subjoin. 



His first classification was given in 1775, in the Systema Ento- 

 mologiae. 



I. Insects with biting oral organs. 



1 . Four or six palpi at the maxilla and lahhim. 

 n. Maxillce free, uncovered. 1. Eleutherata (Coleoptera of 

 Linnaeus). 



b. Maxillte covered. 2. Ulonata (Hemiptera of De Geer; a 



portion of the Hemiptera of Linnaeus). 



c. Maxilla connate with the labium. 3. Synistata (Neuroptera, 



Hymenoptera, and some Aptera ^Monocul. Onisc. Le- 

 pixnia, Podura~\ of Linnaeus). 

 r\. No maxilla". 4. Agonata (lobsters and scorpions). 



