ENTOMOLOGY, 



53 



queen Anne, who gave a new arrangement to the 

 materials collected by his industrious though not very 

 acute author, who was more of a collector and painter 

 of insects than a scientific observer. In that work, 

 Lister establishes ten classes of insects: 1. moths 

 with erect wings, or diurnal butterflies ; 2. moths 

 with horizontal wings, the perfect insect of the cater- 

 pillnr, called the geometra by Goedart ; 3. moths 

 with deflected wings ; 4. libellulae ; 5. bees ; 6. 

 beetles ; 7. grasshoppers ; 8. dipterous flies ; 9. 

 millepedes ; and, 10. spiders. There is nothing, 

 however, in this mode of division, which merits any 

 peculiar praise, or that should prevent us from passing 

 immediately to the microscopical discoveries of 

 the celebrated Leuwenhoeck, from whose inventive 

 genius and patient observations the science received 

 such essential benefit, not more by what he himself 

 discovered, than by the foundation he laid for that 

 system of close and minute observation which alone 

 leads to truth. Our limits will only permit us to 

 designate Blankaart and Geyerus, as occupying a 

 similar rank with Goedart. 



Ray, however, deserves more particular notice. 

 His descriptions are very exact and detailed, and 

 his various works, Synopsis Methodica Animalium, 

 &c., (Lond., 1783), Synopsis Methodica Avium et Pis- 

 cium, (Lond., 1713), and the Historia Insectorum 

 (Lond., 1710), sufficiently demonstrate his claim to 

 the title of the first true systematist. His was the 

 glory of serving as a zoological guide to the illus- 

 trious Swedish reformer, of whom we shall soon have 

 to speak. Ray divides insects into two great classes 

 those which undergo a metamorphosis after having 

 been produced, and those which do not. He again 

 subdivides each of these classes into orders, charac- 

 terized by the feet, or by their absence; by their 

 habitations; by the size or conformation of the 

 various parts of the body ; by their larvae, &c. In this 

 arrangement were included certain tribes of vermes, 

 subsequently separated by Linnaeus. The volumin- 

 ous productions, upon this subject, of the indefatiga- 

 ble Reaumur, who directed his researches into every 

 department of science, appeared in Paris in 6 vols., 

 4to., 1734. 1742. His Memoires pour servir a I'His- 

 toire des Insectes for such is its modest title is an 

 admirable work, both with respect to the number and 

 value of the observations it contains. It is to be 

 lamented that the 7th volume, which is completed, 

 remains unpublished. The intended remaining ones 

 were not commenced when Reaumur died, in 1757. 



But a greater name than any we have yet men- 

 tioned is that of the illustrious reformer of the nomen- 

 clature of the natural sciences. Notwithstanding the 

 labours of so many ingenious, learned, and acute 

 observers of nature, the history of animals, and that of 

 insects hi particular, remained in a confused state 

 until the illustrious Linnaeus reduced the chaotic pile 

 to order. Directing all the energies of his clear and 

 comprehensive mind to the subject, he produced, in 

 his well known Systema Naturae, 1735, the first 

 truly methodical work. In a final edition of the same 

 book, we find an arrangement of insects differing 

 from that contained in the former ; and, as that is 

 the one always referred to at the present day, and as 

 his divisions are, to a certain extent, still retained, 

 we deem it proper to notice it here. He divides 

 insects into caleoptera,hemopter a, lepidoptera, neuvop- 

 tera, hymenoptera, diptera, and aptera. In this class 

 were also included the Crustacea and arachnides, now 

 forming the first and second classes of the third great 

 division of the animal kingdom, or the animalia arti- 

 culata. The system of Linnaeus, though not a 

 natural one, was well adapted to the limited number 

 of animals then known, and which, with respect to 

 insects, did not exceed 800 or 900. Its subsequent 



alterations necessarily arose from the immense num- 

 ber of new ones which the increasing zeal of 

 observers detected in every part of the globe. 



L 'Admiral, Letharding, Lesser, Degeer, Roesel, 

 Scopoli, and Geoflroy, all contributed, and some of 

 them greatly, to multiply facts and detect errors. 

 Lyonnet, however, merits something more than the 

 bare mention of his name. Animated by a zeal that 

 no disappointment could damp, and armed with a 

 patience that set obstacles at defiance, this untiring 

 inquirer devoted seven years of his life to the anatomy 

 of a single insect the larva of a species of cossus that 

 inhabits the willow. The plates of his work, the 

 Traite Anatomique de la Chenille du Saule (4to., 

 1762), eighteen in number, were all engraved by his 

 own hand, with a minuteness, fidelity, and elegance 

 that have seldom, if ever, been equalled. The ensem- 

 ble is pronounced, by the greatest authority of our 

 age, a chef-d'oeuvre both of anatomy and engraving. 



We cannot stop to notice particularly the labours 

 of SchaefFer, Seba, Forster, andDrury, each of whom 

 added something to the general fund of knowledge. 

 With respect to those of Fabricius, it is otherwise. 

 This celebrated entomologist, and pupil of Linnaeus, 

 published numerous and valuable works on his 

 favourite science, of which we will only cite the 

 Entomologia Systematica, emendata et aucta (4 vols., 

 8vo., 1792 1794), the Supplementum Entomologies 

 Systematicee (1798), and the Systema Eleutherator jm, 

 Rhyngotorum, &c., (from 1801 to 1805). He was the 

 first who had recourse to the parts of the mouth, or 

 organs of manducation, as a basis of distribution ; and 

 a vast number of new species of insects were de- 

 scribed by him, in his remarkably concise but clear 

 manner, with which Gmelin, a naturalist, or rather 

 editor, of a very different class, enriched the Systema 

 of Linnasus. The career of this distinguished man, 

 whose love of truth in matters of science is strongly 

 exemplified in his well known emphatic epitaph on 

 John Hill, was prematurely arrested by death in 

 1807, just as he was preparing to publish his Systema 

 Glossatorum, an extract from which is given by Illi- 

 ger in his Magazin fur Insectenkunde. The splen- 

 did and costly works of Olivier (5 vols., fol., Paris, 

 17891808), Donovan (London, 17781805), Pali- 

 sot de Beauvois, (Paris, fol., 1805, et seq.) Cra- 

 mer, (4 vols., 4to, wkh 400 coloured plates, 

 Amsterdam, 1779, continued by Stoll, in 1 vol., 4to., . 

 1790 et seq.), together with a multitude of others of 

 a less magnificent description, bring our sketch down 

 to a period in the annals of the natural sciences which 

 is graced by the name of Cuvier. It is to him that 

 we are indebted for what is termed the natural me- 

 thod, or an arrangement in which, to use his own 

 words, "all beings of the same genus are placed 

 nearer to each other than to those of ah 1 other 

 genera of the same order similarly disposed with 

 respect to those of all other orders, &c." The ener- 

 gy and discrimination of this modern oracle of the 

 natural sciences, as he has justly been styled, 

 aided by untiring industry, have fixed the founda- 

 tions of zoology upon the immutable basis of com- 

 parative anatomy. From the moment his Tableau 

 elementaire de I'Histoire naturelle des Animaux,&nd 

 his Lecons d'Anatomie Comparee, made their appear- 

 ance, the entomologist, in common with the culti- 

 vators of every other branch of zoology, was sensible 

 that he at last held the clew by which he could hope 

 to traverse the hitherto impracticable labyrinth. 

 The study now became a greater object of interest 

 than ever. Lamarck produced his work upon inver- 

 tebral animals, and Latreille, guided by Cuvier, 

 soon gave to the world his famous entomological 

 system. 



Among the modem writers of eminence on the 



