180 Prof. J. C. Schiddte on the Classification 
geschichte, 1841, i. p. 62). He admits that very much will 
be gained for the classification of insects by a more accurate 
knowledge of their earlier stages ; but at the same time he warns 
us against entertaining too high expectations as if the progress 
of classification principally depended on the study of the meta- 
morphoses, and he urges particularly that we must not suppose 
that a classification according to the larvze would always coincide 
with a classification according to imagos. He mentions -by 
way of illustration that one would naturally expect a great simi- 
larity between the larvee of Buprestide and those of* Klateride, 
which does not really exist, and that the larva of Melasis would 
make a nearer approach to the Elater-type than to the Buprestis- 
type, whereas the reverse is rather the case. A couple of pages 
further on he sums up his remarks in this general result—that, 
although it would not be possible to build a classification on the 
structure of the larve, it will nevertheless be of the greatest 
importance, nay, decidedly necessary, to take that point into 
consideration, as it will always do good service as a means of 
testing classifications founded on other principles,—a general 
statement which I have no doubt sounds so very qualified prin- 
cipally because he was checked by the idea that Buprestide and 
Elateridee are very nearly allied to one another, though their 
larvee are so different, and by the apparently anomalous relations 
of the larva of Melasis. But for these poimts being present to 
his mind, his verdict would have been much fuller and more 
decided. These words, like so many others which have pro- 
ceeded from the celebrated entomologist—too early taken away 
from his bright scientific career—have awakened an echo in many 
a dark corner, and since served as a principal support for the 
often repeated and convenient assertion that the earlier stages of 
insects correspond in many cases so little to the relationships of 
the imagos, that they even at times vary more according to spe- 
cies than generally according to genera or families. And thus 
it has come about that this view of the larva of Medasis now 
stands as a sort of barrier in front of an immense tract of 
scientific fallow land, which only by the razing of that barrier 
can be made available for new culture. 
And this barrier indeed seems indestructible; for how could 
anybody presume to doubt that the larva of Melasis, which 
presents such a striking external similarity to the typical larva 
of Buprestes, also burrows in timber like the latter, seeing that 
we possess minute accounts of it by such able entomologists as 
Nordlinger* and Perris}, the former of these having, as eel as 
Guérin t, even supplied us with drawings of its burrows, gaile- 
* Stettin. entom. Zeit. (1848) pp. 225-226, t. 1. fig. 2. 
+ Ann. de la Soc. Entom. de Fr. sér. 2. v. 548. = Ibid. i. pl. 5. fig. 4. 
