SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 369 
involved in the highest degree, rolling wheel within wheel 
ad infinitum, and revolving, if I may so speak, round its 
centre and summit — man* : who, though not including 
in himself all that distinguishes them, is still the great 
Archetype in which they terminate, and from which 
they degrade on all sides. 
It is by this convolving series that the various groups 
into which the kingdoms of nature seem resolvable are 
formed. We are instructed by the highest authority 
that every thing was created "after its kind;" and the 
common sense of mankind in all ages has imposed classic, 
generic, and other names implying sections, as well as 
specific ones, upon natural objects : and though many 
modern Physiologists have asserted that species form the 
only absolute division in nature; yet as all seem to allow 
that there are groups, and many that these are repre- 
sented by a circle or group returning into itself b , the 
most absolute division in nature, we will not contend 
for a term c . We now come to consider these groups 
themselves, and may notice them under various denomi- 
nations. 
It is customary to consider all the substances of which 
our globe consists as divided into three kingdoms, — the 
* N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xx. 485. b The idea of a conti- 
nuous series militates somewhat against that of a circle returning 
into itself. The progression of the series may be in a circle ; but at 
the point of contact where the second circle meets the first, the lines 
must cut each other; and at this point of intersection of the two cir- 
cles are of course the osculant groups constituting the first and the 
last of each circle, which in their intervention ccme in contact with 
each other, or rather forming transition groups. If each circle is re- 
garded as absolute, the series is broken, though the osculant groups 
connect the circular ones. c Mr. MacLeay almost ad- 
mits that there are natural genera. Hor. Ent. 492. 
VOL. IV. 2 B 
