Samouelle's Entomology. 307 



Objects for the Microscope. Illustrated with Twelve Plates. 

 By George Samouelle, Associate of the Linnaean Society of 

 London. Svo. pp. 496. 



We have been much pleased with the inspection of this new 

 and truly original contribution to the history of British Entomo- 

 logy. It bears manifest marks of being the fruits of much la- 

 borious and scientific research into a very interesting department 

 of knowledge, and is presented to the public in a style of minute 

 elegance and accuracy higlily worthy of the interest of the sub- 

 ject which it illustrates. 



Our readers will not be surprised at the terms in vvhich we com- 

 mence our notice of this work, when thev learn that the author 

 (Mr. Samouelle) has been indebted (see Dedication and Preface) 

 *' for the most valuable parts of its contents to the kindness and 

 liberality" of Dr. Leach, F.R.S., who gave the author " the free 

 use of his books and manuscripts." '^ It was an ofier,"says Mr.S. 

 " which I could not withstand, and which no lover of science 

 will regret." We are ijuite sure that no lover of science will re- 

 gret it ; every one must, on the contrary, feel inexpressibly grati- 

 fied that the treasures of so able and indefatigable a cultivator of 

 the science of Entomology as Dr. Leach, should be opened to 

 general participation, and equally so that the task of unfolding 

 them to the world should have devolved on an individual so 

 faithful, ingenuous, and discriminating, as the author of the pre- 

 sent volume has shown himself to be. 



Mr. S. conmiences his work with giving a sufficiently ample 

 and minute account of those characteristic parts of insects to 

 which the attention of the student should be chiefly directed, and 

 follows it up by some acute observations intended to show the su- 

 periority, we might almost venture to sav the absolute necessity, 

 of the modern System of Classification. 



The object of all system is to reduce a science to its simplest 

 terms, by reducing the propositions it comprehends to the greatest 

 degree of generality of which thev are susceptible. A good me- 

 thod in comparative anatomy must, therefore, be such as will en- 

 able us to assign to each class,and to each of its subdivisions, some 

 qualities common to the greater part of the organs. This object 

 is to be attained by two different means, which may serve to prove 

 or verify one anotlier. The first, and that to which all men will 

 naturally have recourse, is to proceed from the observations of 

 species to uniting them in genera, and to collecting them into a 

 superior order, according as we find ourselves conducted to that 

 classification by a view of tiie whole of their attributes. The se- 

 cond, and that which the greater part of modern naturalists have 

 employed, is to fix bcforeliand upon certain bases of divisions, 



U 2 agreeably 



