HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 439 
it, has rendered it still more at variance with nature and 
Aristotle: I mean the celebrated Vallisnieri, to whom 
in other respects, though in this he fell behind his age, 
the science was under great obligations. He divides 
insects into, 1. Those that inhabit vegetable substances 
living or dead. 2. Those that inhabit any kind ofjluid 
and in any state. 3. Those that inhabit any earthy or 
mineral substances, dead bones> or shells. And 4. Those 
that inhabit living animals a . 
The work that is usually called Mouffet's Theatrum 
Insectorum was produced in the present era, and was the 
fruit of the successive labours of several men of talent. 
Dr. Edward Wotton and the celebrated Conrade Ges- 
ner laid the foundation ; whose manuscripts falling into 
the hands of Dr. Thomas Penny, — an eminent physician 
and botanist of the Elizabethan age b , much devoted to 
the study of insects, — he upon this foundation meditated 
raising a superstructure which should include a complete 
history of these animals ; and with this view he devoted 
the leisure hours of fifteen years of his life to the study 
of every book then extant that treated of the science 
either expressly or incidentally, and to the description 
and figuring of such insects as he could procure ; but 
before he had reduced his materials to order, in 1589 he 
was snatched away by an untimely death. His unfinished 
manuscripts were purchased at a considerable price by 
MoufFet, a contemporary physician of singular learning , 
who reduced them to order, improved the style, added 
new matter, and not less than 150 additional figures; and 
* Espcrienz. cd Osserv. i. 42 — . 
'' Pultency's Sketches of Botany in England, i. 86. 
Thcalr. Insect, Epist. Dcd. i, 
