5A STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
he chose to affect entire novelty; he made alter- 
ations and innovations in matters where none were 
called for; and he built his arrangement upon 
characters which, when taken by themselves, are 
not only extremely difficult of detection, but also 
very artificial. He devised new names for the orders, 
and he founded his generic characters entirely on 
the parts of the mouth, excluding all others of 
external structure. It seems difficult to account 
for the great popularity which Fabricius at one time 
enjoyed on the Continent, and even in England; 
seeing that, although his zeal and industry were 
unwearied, his principles of classification were 
troublesome and complicated, and his ideas on the 
philosophy of his science crude and superficial. 
But this popularity entirely arose from his having 
no competitor in systematic entomology. Linneus, 
having defined his orders, and indicated the chief 
generic groups, seems to have almost relinquished 
further improvements in this branch of his studies, 
and to have tacitly resigned entomology into the 
hands of his pupil. The consequence was, that the 
entomologists of the day, continually discovering 
new species, and finding the Linnean genera totally 
inadequate to contain such accumulating novelties, 
had no alternative but to adopt the system of 
Fabricius, at least so far as his genera were con- 
cerned, for very few were disposed to relinquish 
the Linnean names of the orders ; and Fabricius, in 
some of his subsequent works, was induced to bring 
in the external characters of his genera, in addition 
to those taken from their oral organs. Fabricius 
lived long, and wrote much; so that he may be said 
