448 HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
in the twelfth (uniting the Orthoptera, which he had at 
first considered as of a Coleopterous type, to the Ilcmi- 
ptera) also their limits. His system, being founded upon 
the absence or presence and characters of the organs 
for flight, is in some degree a republication of the Ari- 
stotelian, and may be called the Alary System. 
, o • 5 crustaceous with a straight suture Coleoptera ... 1. 
i upenor ^ se micrastaoeous, incumbent .... Hemiptera ... 2. 
' J C imbricated with scales Lepidoptera . 3. 
c 1 J ' All < , . S unarmed . > Nem-optera . 4. 
£< ^ membranous - Anus Kc U leate.5i/^o^r a 5. 
2. Poisers in the place of the posterior pair .... Diptera .... 6. 
0. Or without either wings or elytra Aptera 7. 
In considering this table, it must strike every one ac- 
quainted with the subject, that although the assumption 
of a single set of organs whereon to build a system can 
scarcely be expected to lead to one perfectly natural, 
yet that the majority of the groups here given as Orders 
merit that character. The second indeed and the last 
require further subdivision, and concerning the fourth 
no satisfactory conclusion has yet been drawn. With 
regard to his series of the Orders, it is mostly artificial. 
Linne has the advantage of all his predecessors in giving 
clearer definitions of his Orders, and in their nomencla- 
ture; in which he has followed the path first trodden 
by Aristotle. 
One of his most prominent excellencies, which led 
the way more than any thing else to a distinct know- 
ledge of natural objects, was his giving definitions of his 
genera, or the groups that he distinguished by that name, 
since all preceding writers had merely made them known 
by the imposition of a name. His generic characters 
of insects were of two kinds : A shorter, containing the 
