THE MAGAZINE 



OF 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



NOVEMBER, 1836. 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



Art. I. On the modern Nomenclature of Natural History. 

 By J. O. Westwood, Esq., F.L.S. 



If the study of natural history had remained stationary since 

 the days of Linnaeus; if naturalists had contented themselves 

 with the possession of no farther knowledge of an animal 

 than could be summed up in its legitimate twelve-worded 

 specific character ; or, if the number of animals described in 

 the Systema Naturae had received no increase ; perhaps no plan 

 could be suggested, more perfect, for the diffusion of a know- 

 ledge of natural history, than that of Linnaeus ; no further ge- 

 neric characters would be necessary, no further description 

 requisite. Fortunately, however, the scene has completely 

 changed : the study of natural history has reached the rank 

 of a science, for the attainment of a knowledge of which a 

 high degree of attention is requisite; and naturalists feel that 

 they have not obtained a sufficient knowledge of an animal, 

 until every portion of its organisation has been submitted to 

 a rigid investigation. 



Hence, although the length of descriptions of groups of in- 

 sects, or rather of those particular species which have been 

 selected as the types of such groups, has been ridiculed by 

 Mr. Swainson, under the name of generic chapters, " so com- 

 plicated and prolix, as to occupy half a page," [Pref. Arct. 

 Zool.) yet the student who would wish to possess a knowledge 

 of the entire structure of such types, instead of that superficial 

 acquaintance conveyed by those short definitions which are 

 termed specific or generic characters, as distinguished from 

 specific or generic descriptions, has repeatedly to lament the 

 shortness of such generic chapters. Thus, in Curtis's British 

 Entomology, the description of the genus Oryssus occupies an 

 entire page : in Latreille's Genera Crustaceorum et Insectorum, 



Vol. IX.— Mo. 67. t t 



