PREFACE*. 



OVERWHELMED with scientific labours, and yielding, perhaps 

 too easily, to the impulse of friendship and to my desire to serve him, 

 M. Cuvier has confided to me that portion of this work which treats 

 of Insects. 



These animals were the objects of his earliest zoological studies, 

 and the cause of his connexion with one of the most celebrated pupils 

 of Linnaeus, Fabricius, who in his writings gives him frequent assur- 

 ance of his high esteem. It was even by various interesting obser- 

 vations on several of these animals Journal d'Hist. Nat. that 

 M. Cuvier commenced his career in natural history. Entomology, 

 in common with all the other branches of Zoology, has derived the 

 greatest advantage from his anatomical researches, and the happy 

 changes he has effected in the basis of our classification. The internal 

 organization of Insects is now better known, and this study is no longer 

 neglected as was previously the case. He has placed us on the way 

 to the Natural System f , and greatly will the public regret that his 



* This preface is the same which stood at the commencement of the third volume 

 of the first edition of this work. Having there confined myself to an exposition of 

 the general principles, upon which my arrangement of the animals composing the 

 Linnaean class of Insects was effected, and having in the present edition made no 

 change in that respect, the same observations are still applicable. Considered, 

 however, with regard to the details, or to the secondary and tertiary divisions, that 

 is to say, Orders, Families, Genera and Subgenera, this edition will be found to pre- 

 sent a remarkable difference. It was impossible to place it on a level with the 

 actual state of the science, without modifying several parts of my former system, 

 and without considerable additions, which, such has been the progress of Ento- 

 mology, are so numerous, that even by filling two volumes instead of one, I have 

 been barely enabled to give a very summary view of the multitude of generic divisions 

 effectuated within the last ten years, and which are frequently founded on the most 

 minute characters. This branch of Zoology has gained much from other and more 

 positive sources, those of Anatomy. These observations I was the more impera- 

 tively bound to notice, as they formed part of the plan of the illustrious author of 

 the " Rgne Animal," and as they serve to confirm the stability of the divisions I 

 have established. By a perusal of the general remarks which precede them, the 

 reader will be better able to appreciate the motives which have determined these 

 changes, and to feel the importance of the addenda that enrich the entomological 

 portion of this edition. A simple comparison between it and that of the former 

 will show, at a glance, that it has been entirely remoulded, or that it is a new work 

 which we now present to the world, rather than a new edition. 



f Tableau Element, de 1'Hist. Nat. des Animaux, and the Lee. d'Anat. Compar. 



a2 



