OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. (33 



materials before him, Sir Joseph Banks was unable to reach any satisfac- 

 tory conclusion.^ 



Nothing can more incontrovertibly demonstrate the importance of 

 studying Entomology as a science than this fact. Those observations, to 

 which thousands of unscientific sufferers proved themselves incompetent, 

 would have been readily made by one entomologist well versed in his science. 

 He would at once have determined the order and genus of the insect, and 

 whether it was a known or new species ; and in a twelvemonth at furthest 

 he would have ascertained in what manner it made its attacks, and vv'hether 

 it were possible that it might be transmitted 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 travelers and popular observers that the want of 

 a systematic knowledge of Entomology is so deplorable. A great portion 

 of the labors 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 

 experiments on the barberry, found it quite impossible to make him com- 

 prehend what plant he referred to.^ 



So great is the importance of a systematic arrangement 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 in an order often so 

 arbitrary and defective, that it is difficult to discover even the page con- 

 taining the word you are in search of. Can it be denied, then, that they 

 are most meritoriously employed who devote themselves to the removal 

 of these defects — to the perfecting of the system — and to clearing the path 

 of future economical or physiological observers from the obstructions which 

 now beset it ? And who that knows the vast extent of the science, and 

 how impossible it is that a divided attention can embrace the whole, will 

 contend that it is not desirable that some laborers in the field of literature 

 should devote themselves entirely and exclusively to this object ? Who 

 that is aware of the importance of the comprehensive views of a Fabricius, 

 an Illiger, or a Latreille, and the infinite saving of time of which their 

 inquiries will be productive to their followers, will dispute their claim to 

 rank amongst the most honorable in science ? 



1 The American Entomologist Say, was the first who satisfactorily determined the species 

 and genus of the insect in question. Say on Cecidomijia Destructor, in Juurn. Acad. Nat. 

 Sc. Philadelph., i. ; and Kirby in Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist., i. 



2 No one knew Reaumur's Abeille Tapissiere, until Latreille, happily combining system 

 with attention to the economy of insects, proved it to be a new species — his Megachiie Fa- 

 paveris. — Hist, de Fourmis, 297. 



3 Bibliothek. vii. 310. 



■* Tour on the Continent, 'in. 159. 



