150 HISTORY OF ENTO3IOL0OY. 
"Brevis esse laboro 
Obscurus fio — " 
and makes his definitions of species, without adding a 
description, so extremely short as to suit equally well 
perhaps a dozen different insects. The minor groups 
into which he has divided some of his Orders and Ge- 
nera are sometimes natural, sometimes artificial. Those 
of the Colcoptem, from characters drawn from their an- 
tennae (as is evident from his arrangement of the genera 
in that Order), are of the latter description ; while 
those of his Aptera are more natural. The genera that 
he has most happily laboured in this respect are his 
Hemipterous ones of Gryllus, Cicada, and Cimex, and all 
his Lcpidoptera. He had such a tact for discovering na- 
tural groups in general, that in him it seems almost to 
have been intuitive. 
But in no respect were the labours of Linne more be- 
neficial to the science and to Zoology in general, than 
when he undertook to describe the animals of his own 
country. His Fauna Suecica is an admirable exemplar, 
which ought to stimulate the Zoologists of every country 
to make it one of their first objects that its animal pro- 
ductions shall no longer remain unregistered and un- 
described. Botanists have almost every where been di- 
ligent in effecting this with respect to plants, but other 
branches of Natural History have been more neglected. 
In his Systema Natural Linne attempted this for all the 
productions of our globe. The idea was a vast one ; and 
the execution, though necessarily falling far short of it, 
did him infinite honour : and in it he has laid a founda- 
tion for his successors to build upon till time shall be 
no more. 
