48 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



nistered in a recent state. Would he not be anxious to 

 proclaim the happy discovery to sufferers in all quar- 

 ters of the globe? As his remedy would not admit of 

 transportation, he would have no other means than by 

 describing it. Now the question is, whether, on the 

 supposition that no system of Entomology existed, he 

 would be able to do this, so as to be intelligible to a 

 physician in North America, for instance, eager to ad- 

 minister so precious a medicine to his expiring pa- 

 tient ? It would evidently be of no use to say that the 

 specific was a beetle : there are thousands of different 

 beetles in North America. Nor would size or colour 

 be any better guide : there are hundreds of beetles of 

 the same size and the same colour. Even the plant on 

 which it fed would be no sufficient clue ; for many in- 

 sects, resembling each other to an unpractised eye, 

 feed on the same plant ; and the same insect in differ- 

 ent countries feeds upon different plants. His only re- 

 source, then, would be a coloured figure and full de- 

 scription of it. But every entomologist knows that 

 there exist insects perfectly distinct, yet so nearly re- 

 sembling each other, that no engraving, nor any lan- 

 guage other than that strictly scientific, can possibly 

 discriminate them. After all, therefore, the chances 

 are, that our discoverer's remedy, invaluable as it might 

 be, must be confined to his own immediate neighbour- 

 hood, or to those who came to receive personal infor- 

 mation from him. But with what ease is it made known 

 when a system of the science exists! If the insect be 

 already described, he has but to mention its generic 

 and trivial names, and by aid of two words alone, every 

 entomologist, though in the most distant region — whe- 



