188 Prof. J. C. Schjodte on the Classification of Cerambyces, 



tempus est eas elaborare, quum tyrones adhuc scientise simus" 

 {ibid. § 7. 2) ; and it is evident that such a method would be 

 superseded at once and belong to the past from the moment 

 that Latreille had started the principle of natural families. 



Of course it is now easy enough to see that very much might 

 nevertheless have been done by following up the method which 

 Fabricius had so well established, particularly if he had been 

 able to raise himself to a more physiological view of those im- 

 portant organs on which alone he founded his genera; but 

 surely it would have been almost a miracle if he had been able 

 in his old age to adopt the new method — so entirely at variance 

 with the principles he had hitherto followed — which Savigny 

 shortly after took up with such great success. Fabricius would not 

 surrender his scientific supremacy; and the consequence was that, 

 in order to master the fast accumulating material, he was obliged 

 to extend his genera far beyond their capability — fixed, as they 

 had been, in a one-sided manner — and more and more to weaken 

 the systematic importance of the characters, as may be seen in 

 the ' Systema Eleutheratorum.' Nevertheless it may be said in 

 truth that Fabricius, through his genera founded on the organs 

 of the mouth in connexion with the excellent "adumbrationes," 

 has constructed the classification of Cerambyces in all essential 

 points as it now stands; for since then it has hardly received 

 any improvement, save the useful observations on the relations 

 of the coxae and trochanters which Spinola has communicated 

 in his well-composed treatise on Prionini, but which are by no 

 means so important as he imagined*. The only difference is 

 that, since Latreille began to attach less systematic importance 

 to the structure of the mouth, the study of its organs has been 

 almost entirely neglected, and the long-winded definitions of 

 thousands of species have been founded entirely on those external 

 characters (as the shape and direction of the head, the position 

 of the antennas compared with the eyes, &c.) which Fabricius 

 had mentioned only as additions to his principal definitions. 

 The consequence is that the classification of this family, as that 

 of so many others, has sunk into such confusion that the differ- 

 ence between the characters of genera and those of species is on 

 the point of becoming effaced and reduced to a mere matter of 

 taste, so that one might make a separate genus of every species 

 — return, in fact, to the ante-Linnsean standing-point — without 

 overstepping the legitimate consequences of the mode of pro- 

 ceeding now prevailing in the classification of Cerambyces. 



* Dei Prioniti e dei Coleotteri ad essi piu affini Osservazioni del Marchese 

 Massirailiano Spinola (Estr. del vol. v. ser. 2 delle Memorie della R. Aeca- 

 demia delle Sc. di Torino). 



