publication of " Jiirinean " Genera of Hymencptera. 345 



Hymenopterists have succeeded in seeing for themselves 

 and convincing others that the neuration-characters must 

 no more be made an idol than the instrumenta cibaria of 

 Fabricius, and that neither Fabricius nor Jurine can claim 

 to have shown us once for all the infallible " characteres 

 essentiales," by which Nature has branded or ticketed all 

 living creatures in order that Man may be able to dis- 

 tinguish them ! This is what the pre-Darwinian ento- 

 mologists really meant by a " character," and the notion 

 which still exists that there is some essential difference 

 between " generic " and " non-generic " characters, " struc- 

 tural " characters and "colour" characters, "specific" 

 characters and "varietal" characters, etc., etc., etc., is 

 really not very different. 



But though we now talk of Jurine's invention as a 

 System — the " Alary System " and so forth — neither 

 Jurine himself nor his contemporaries ever called it so. 

 It was invariably called^ — not a System, but a Method. 

 What is the difference ? It seems to be this. 



A System, or rather The System, is the actual grouping 

 of existences which makes up the Universe. There can 

 obviously be only one such System, and this Linne had 

 called the " Systema Naturae," never claiming for a 

 moment that he had made it or devised it, but only that 

 he had discovered it. But a Method (jueOodog) is something 

 much humbler. It is simply a " way-to wards " some 

 desired goal. What Jurine claimed was simply this, to 

 have devised a neiv manner of getting to the heart of things ; 

 — an easier, more rapid method, than that of Fabricius — 

 but nothing more. This will have to be remembered, if 

 we try to understand how it was possible for Panzer to 

 think that Jurine's " Method " might be accepted without 

 abandoning the only possible or conceivable " Systema," 

 which " systema " to him meant simply — the Fabrician 

 conception of an Animal Kingdom, based on certain essential 

 differences between Animals which Nature had indicated by 

 fashioning their " instrumenta cibaria " differently. Believing 

 this, and that such characters were the only really infalhble 

 and " natural " characters, Panzer could, and did, hold also, 

 that animals might likewise have other characters, not in 

 the strict sense " natural," but (as a matter of fact) so 

 frequently accompanying the " natural " characters, that 

 the presence of such and such an " artificial " character 

 might give us a useful hint what the natural characters 



