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V. A Description of some Insects which appear to exempUfij 

 ' Mr. William S. MacLeay's Doctrine of Affinity and Analogy. 

 By the Rev. William Kirby, M.A. F.R.S. and L.S. 



Read December 17, 1822. 



No objects are more interesting to the scientific naturalist than 

 those which assume the external appearance of one tribe, while 

 their more essential characters and their habits indicate that they 

 belong to another. These objects a prima facie survey would 

 often induce us to refer to a very different set of beings from 

 that to which a more intimate acquaintance with their peculiar 

 diagnostics and economy would lead us. And we shall find, 

 the further we extend our researches, the traces of that plan 

 of Creative Wisdom by which a symbolical relationship, if I 

 may so call it, connects such of his creatures, as in other respects 

 are placed in opposition to each other, as well as SLnatural affinity 

 those that really approximate. Writers in every department of 

 natural history, when they have been endeavouring to thread the 

 labyriirth of affinities, have been extremely puzzled by this re- 

 markable circumstance. They were aware that those species 

 which connect two proximate tribes, generally partake of the 

 characters of both ; but they were not sufficiently aware of this 

 resemblance between objects that are connected by little or no 

 affinity. Hence it has happened, not unfrequently, that objects 

 have been referred not to the tribe to which they are really related, 

 but to that which they resemble in some of their less essential 



characters. 



Mr. 



