350 EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 
dering the almost insuperable difficulties which, from the 
minuteness of the objects, oppose themselves to the skill 
and instruments of the entomological anatomist, we can 
scarcely hope that it will ever attain to that certainty 
and perfection to which, as far as the larger animals are 
concerned, anatomy has arrived. Yet infinitely more has 
been accomplished than might have been expected, and 
new accessions of light are daily thrown upon it. When 
mal forms, he refers to the local circumstances, wants, and habits of 
individual animals themselves; these he regards as the modifiers of 
their organization and structure (162). To show the absurd nonplus 
to which this his favourite theory has reduced him, it will only be 
necessary to mention the individual instances which in different 
works he adduces to exemplify it. In his Systéme, he supposes that 
the web-footed birds (Anseres) acquired their natatory feet by fre- 
quently separating their toes as far as possible from each other in 
their efforts to swim. Thus the skin that unites these toes at their 
base contracted a habit of stretching itself; and thus in time the web- 
foot of the duck and the goose were produced. The waders (Gralla), 
which, in order to procure their food, must stand in the water, but 
do not love to swim, from their constant efforts to keep their bodies» 
from submersion, were in the habit of always stretching their legs 
with this view, till they grew long enough to save them the trou- 
ble!!! (18—). How the poor birds escaped drowning before they 
had got their web-feet and long legs, the author does not inform us. 
In another work, which I have not now by me, I recollect he attri~ 
butes the long neck of the camelopard to its efforts to reach the 
boughs of the mimosa, which, after the lapse of a few thousand years, 
it at length accomplished !!! In his last work, he selects as an ex- 
ample one of the Mollusce, which, as it moved along, felt an incli- 
nation to explore hy means of touch the bodies in its path: for this 
purpose it caused the nervous and other fluids to move in masses 
successively to certain points of its head, and thus in process of 
time it acquired its horns cr tentacula! ! Anim. sans Vertébr, i. 188. 
It is grievous that this eminent zoologist, who in other respects 
stands at the head of his science, should patronize notions so con- 
fessedly absurd and childish. 
