476 Mr. W. S. MacLcay on Ceratitis Citriperda, 



has therein fulfilled the great obj ect of Natural History, or indeed that 

 scientifically he has more merit than another, whose researches, provided 

 they may be accurate, are not of utility so visible. Were we once to 

 concede any such principle, a great portion of facts, which however unin- 

 teresting to the world at large, are at the same time absolutely necessary 

 for the Naturalist to know, would thus be neglected, and when we came 

 to study the noblest and most interesting branch of our science, the 

 progression of natural affinities, we should find ourselves without data 

 to proceed upon. 



I even think it may be easily shewn that the study of Zoology has not 

 been so immediately beneficial to the ordinary interests of mankind as it 

 would have been, had persons looked less anxiously to the cui bono, and 

 more accurately to apparently useless facts that lay within their observa- 

 vation. To take one most obvious example ; it is apparently of little 

 import to our domestic comfort that insects should be subject to meta- 

 morphosis, and therefore this metamorphosis remains a fact scarcely 

 known to the generality of those individuals, who, from their professions 

 or mode of life, are often most subject to their ravages, although of all 

 points of insect history, it is a knowledge of their metamorphosis that in 

 most cases offers us the best hope of counteracting the evils these little 

 animals inflict. 



It may seem needless to make these common-place remarks to the 

 Editor of a Journal, which has originated in similar views of Natural 

 History, and the very object of which is to record and perpetuate the 

 knowledge of facts, that without some such protecting influence would 

 soon sink into oblivion. If, therefore, I have been led to decry the force 

 of the most vulgar of the various objections that have been brought 

 against Entomologists, it is that none of your readers may imagine, be- 

 cause an insect may be minute (such as the very one, of which, as de- 

 structive to oranges, T propose giving the following account) that there- 

 fore it is unworthy to occupy attention ; and that still less any of them 

 may think, that when an insect is proved to be destructive, all investigation 

 ought to cease with the knowledge of this bare fact. The only reward 

 the Naturalist ought to look for, is the delight which the study affords, 

 and this proceeds from the examination of an Jphis as well as from that 

 of a Limulus. 



i 



