368 SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 



most evident laws of creation is variety; and if we survey 

 all the works of the MOST HIGH, we shall no where dis- 

 cover that kind of order and symmetry that this strict 

 interpretation implies. The general march of nature 

 therefore seems to say, that there must be varying though 

 not violent intervals in the series of beings : or in other 

 words, some conterminous species or groups have more 

 characters in common than others. 



It was the opinion of Bonnet (in this field himself a 

 host) and many other Naturalists, that the series of be- 

 ings was not only continuous, but undeviating, ascending 

 in a direct line from the lowest to the highest 1 . Others, 

 finding that this theory could not be made to accord 

 with the actual state of things in nature, thought that a 

 scale of the kingdoms of nature must represent a map or 

 net b ; thus abandoning a continuous series: and Lamarck, 

 as was before observed , for the solution of the difficulty, 

 arranged Invertebrate animals in a double subramose 

 one. Mr. W. S. MacLeay and (without consultation 

 nearly at the same time) Professor Agardh, Mr. Fries, 

 &c. have given to the learned world an opinion which 

 approximates more nearly to what we see in nature: viz. 

 That the arrangement of objects is indeed in a continu- 

 ous series, but which in its progress forms various con- 

 volutions, each of which may be represented by a circle, 

 or a series that returns into itself d . According to this 

 opinion, which seems the most consistent of any yet 

 advanced, and which reconciles facts which upon no 

 other plan can be reconciled, the series of beings is 



a (Euvres vii. 51. b N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xx. 485. 



c VOL. III. p. 11. d W. S. MacLeay. Hor. Ento- 



molog, passim ; and in Linn. Trans, ubi supr. 53 . 



