376 SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 
Aristotle, had reference to this circumstance. But this 
alone does not afford characters sufficiently discrimina- 
ting : for though to an accurate observer a difference in 
these organs appears to be characteristic of most of the 
Orders, yet in some it is not easily detected or defined. 
In the Neuroptcra there are as many different types of 
wings as there are of tribes or suborders. So that it 
seems not possible so to construct the definition of every 
Order, as to take its character from the organs of flight 
alone. Linne was sensible of this, and was compelled 
to have recourse to subsidiary characters in the majority 
of his: his observation therefore with regard to Genera, 
— that the character does not give the genus, but the 
genus the character a , — applies equally to Orders; and the 
characters included in the definition of an Order, should 
be the result of a careful examination of its component 
groups. 
On a former occasion I named to you the Orders into 
which it appeared to me the Class Insccla might be di- 
vided b ; they were these. Coleoptera ; Strcpsiptera : 
Dermaptera ; OrtJioptera ; Hemiplera ,• Trichoptera ; 
Lepidoptera : Neuroptcra ; Hymenoptera ; Diptera ; 
Aphaniptera : Aptcra. I then briefly explained them 
merely for the sake of illustration, and that you might 
know what description of insects were meant when 
these Orders were mentioned iu my letters, without in- 
tending to affirm that I had arranged them in a natural 
series, or that all of them were perfectly natural. I shall 
3 Scias Charactercm non constituere Genus, sed Genus Charac- 
tcrem ; Charactercm fluorc e Genere, non Genus e Charactcrc ; Cha- 
ractcrem non esse ut Genus fiat, sed ut Genus noscatur. riufos. 
Botan. m. 1G9. b Vol. I. p. GO. note \ 
