DISTRIBUTION OF INSECTS INTO ORDERS. 25 



nearly allied. Mr. MacLeay has offered some other objections 

 against Latreille's system, which he describes as one " expressing 

 more importance to the aerial organs, and the texture of the body, 

 than to the modifications of those organs upon which the very 

 existence of the animal depends. ' Ainsi,' says Lamarck, ' les carac- 

 teres si importans de la bouche ne furent nuUement consideres, et 

 cederent leur preeminence aux organes si variables dela locomotion dans 

 I'air.' " — Horce Ent. p. 360. I can, however, by no means agree with 

 Mr. MacLeay, in the inferior rank given to those organs, which, as 

 before said, are the very organs which, by their extraordinary deve- 

 lopement, prove the winged insects to be the centre or types of the 

 annulose animals. Moreover, the variableness attributed by Lamarck 

 to the locomotive organs is not less striking in the oral organs of 

 some groups, as in the Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, and Neuroptera ; 

 thus evincing the correctness of the remark already made upon the 

 insufficiency of a single character, when attempted to be relied upon 

 as an infallible key to the classification of this class of animals. This 

 is not denied even by those authors who are disposed to admit the or- 

 ganisation of the mouth, as of the highest importance in the classifica- 

 tion of insects ; thus Savigny approves of the Lamarckian divisions 

 into " broj'eurs " and " sufeurs;" but adds, " je ne pense pas qu'on 

 puisse tirer le caractere de ces divisions de la presence ou de I'absence 

 des mandibules," because he considers the mouths of all insects to 

 be " essentiellement composee des memes elemens." [Memoircs, ch. 1.). 

 Latreille also has suggested the division of insects into two other 

 groups, Gymnostomes, or those which have the parts of the mouth 

 naked, and Thecostomes, or those in which some of them are bristle- 

 like, enclosed in a sheath. The Lepidoptera, as well as the Hymenop- 

 tera, enter into the first of these divisions. {Fam. Na(.3S4: 417.) In like 

 manner, Dumeril [Cons. Gen. p. 9.) has remarked, that the lower lip 

 and jaws of some of the Hymenoptera form an apparatus, having " le 

 double faculte de hroyer les alimens, et de \cs pomper par une sorte 

 du succion;" and Messrs. Kirby and Spence (Infr. Ill, 417.) remark, 

 that " If the mode in which insects take their food be strictly con- 

 sidered, it will be found that in this view they ought rather to be 

 regarded as forming three tribes ; for the great majority of the Hynie- 

 nopterous order, and perhaps some others, though furnished with 

 mandibles and maxilla;, never use them for mastication, but really lap 

 their food with their tongue : these, therefore, might be denominated 



