52 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



would have ascertained in what manner it made its at- 

 tacks, and whether it were possible that it might be trans- 

 mitted along with grain into a foreign country ; and on 

 these solid data he could have satisfactorily pointed out 

 the best mode of eradicating the pest, or preventing the 

 extension of its ravages. 



But it is not merely in travellers and popular observers 

 that the want of a systematic knowledge of Entomology 

 is so deplorable. A great portion of the labours of the 

 profoundest naturalists has been from a similar cause 

 lost to the world. Many of the insects concerning which 

 Reaumur and Bonnet have recorded the most interesting 

 circumstances, cannot, from their neglect of system, be 

 at this day ascertained ^. The former, as Beckmann** 

 states on the authority of his letters, was before his death 

 sensible of his great error in this respect : but Bonnet, 

 with singular inconsistency, constantly maintained the 

 inutility of system, even on an occasion when, from his 

 ignorance of it, Sir James Smith, speaking of his experi- 

 ments on the barberry, found it quite impossible to make 

 him comprehend what plant he referred to"=. 



So great is the importance of a systematic arrange- 

 ment of insects. Yet no such arrangement has hitherto 

 been completed. Various fragments towards it indeed 

 exist. But the work itself is in the state of a dictionary 

 wanting a considerable proportion of the words of the 

 language it professes to explain ; and placing those, 

 which it does contain, hi an order often so arbitrary and 



* No one knew Reaumur's Abeillc Tajmsierc until Latreille, happily 

 combining system with attention to the economy of insects, proved it 

 to be a new species — his Megacliile Papaveris. — Hist. deFourmis,297- 



^ Bibliothek. vii. 310. ' Tour on the Continent, iii. 150. 



