368 SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 
most evident laws of creation is variety ; and if we survey 
all the works of the Most High, we shall no where dis- 
cover that kind of order and symmetry that this strict 
interpretation implies. The general march of nature 
therefore seems to say, that there must be varying though 
not violent intervals in the series of beings : or in other 
words, some conterminous species or groups have more 
characters in common than others. 
It was the opinion of Bonnet (in this field himself a 
host) and many other Naturalists, that the series of be- 
ings was not only continuous, but undeviating, ascending 
in a direct line from the lowest to the highest*. Others, 
finding that this theory could not be made to accord 
with the actual state of things in nature, thought that a 
scale of the kingdoms of nature must represent a map or 
nct b ; thus abandoning a continuous series: and Lamarck, 
as was before observed , for the solution of the difficulty, 
arranged Invertebrate animals in a double subramose 
one. Mr. W. S. MacLeay and (without consultation 
nearly at the same time) Professor Agardh, Mr. Fries, 
&c. have given to the learned world an opinion which 
approximates more nearly to what we see in nature: viz. 
That the arrangement of objects is indeed in a continu- 
ous series, but which in its progress forms various con- 
volutions, each of which may be represented by a circle, 
or a series that returns into itself d . According to this 
opinion, — which seems the most consistent of any yet 
advanced, and which reconciles facts which upon no 
other plan can be reconciled, — the series of beings is 
a CEuvres vii. 51—. b N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xx. 485. 
c Vol. III. p. 11—. d W. S. MacLeay. Her. Ento- 
molog, passim ; and in Linn. Trans, ubi supr. 53 — . 
