593 APPENDIX. 



two orders Coleoptera and H3menoptera, are really homologous. When 

 at Barham, we had decided to regard Mr. Kirby's Collare ot" his " Mo- 

 nog. Apiiiii Ang.," as he had then considered it, as the equivalent of the 

 so-cal!etl thorax in Coleoptera ; but on reaching home, and dissecting 

 many insects of the two orders, I was led to suspect we had decided 

 wrongly ; and the anatomical facts on which my doubts rested, are de- 

 tailed in the preceding letter of Nov. 20 (p. 388.). Mr. Kirby, it will 

 have been seen, in his reply (p. 592.), adhered to his original opinion ; 

 and the discussion on this knotty point was continued at great length, 

 by reference to dissections we had made with this view, and arguments 

 built on them, in the eight or ten letters which we exchanged in the 

 spring of 1810, without conviction on either side: but a letter from Mr. 

 Kirby, dated May 14, begins as follows, with an admission that he had 

 seen reason to come over to my way of thinking on this subject, — an 

 admission my candid friend could well afford to make, seeing how often 

 he had convinced me of error, and brought me to adopt his views on 

 points on which we had differed and as thoroughly discussed as this : — 



"Barham, May 14, 1810. 

 " My Dear Sir, — I began a letter to you before breakfast this moniing upon 

 a common sheet of paper, because I did not expect to have matter to fill a 

 folio. I had not proceeded down one side before your letter arrived, the reply 

 to which will, I think, enable me to eke out this 74, and therefore I shall begin 

 anew. You probably got my letter the day after yours was despatched, which 

 I hope set your mind at rest on that score. My object in writing again so 

 soon was to express to you my full conviction that you are perfectly accurate 



which I know was Mr. Kirby's as much as mine, — that in any reference to our work 

 we may be always jointh' referred to, with two exceptions: these are — 1st. The 

 Letter on instinct (Vol. 11.), and my farther remarks upon this subject (Vol. IV. 

 pp. ly — 33.), on which Mr. Kirby differed in opinion from me, as he has stated in the 

 advertisement to Vol. III., and for taking which different view from mine he has 

 given his reasons at large in the Bridgewater Treatise (Vol. II. p. 222 — 280.) ; and 

 2nd. The Letter on hybernation (Vol. II.), in which the denial of the possibibty of 

 satisfactorily explaining the retreat of insects to their wnter quarters, and often the 

 preparing of these previously, from the mere direct sensation of cold, I think it due 

 to him to state (though he did not himself care to advert to it in the advertisement 

 above quoted) was in opposition to his opinions on the subject, and no portion of this 

 Letter, nor of that on instinct, was written by him. With these slight exceptions, no 

 reference to our book can ever be justh' made except in our joint names; for the 

 chances are, that even in the Letters here stated to have been written hj one of the 

 authors, the particular facts or observations referred to (often extending to whole 

 paragraphs and several pages) may have been supplied by the other, as perpetually 

 occurs. It was, indeed, next to that of criticising and perfecting our anatomical 

 and orismological terms, expressh' for the purpose of thus adding to the stores of 

 his coadjutor, that the greater part of the long letters that passed between us, during 

 the extended period employed in the composition of the work, amounting in quantity 

 of matter, if printed, to far more pages than its four volumes, were written by each. 

 In fact, there probably never was a work, composed by two authors, more thoroughly 

 dove-tailed with the contributions of each, than ours. Our book was always in our 

 thoughts; and our reading, even on dissimilar subjects, was constantly furnishing 

 facts, or hints, or illustrations, bearing on the portions of each other, which were 

 duly noted and transmitted, and most generally adopted : and, U it have merit, this 

 is in a great degree owing to its being what it professes to be — a really joint pro- 

 duction of two variouslA'-instructed minds, anxious only to contribute to the per- 

 fection of their labour of love, — for such the work truly was to them, — during the 

 many years it occupied them. 



