54f 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. Linnaeus, 

 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 Linnaean 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 Linnaean 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 



