SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 369 



involved in the highest degree, rolling wheel within wheel 

 ad infinitum> and revolving, if I may so speak, round its 

 centre and summit man* : who, though not including 

 in himself all that distinguishes them, is still the great 

 Archetype in which they terminate, and from which 

 they degrade x>n all sides. 



It is by this convolving series that the various groups 

 into which the kingdoms of nature seem resolvable are 

 formed. We are instructed by the highest authority 

 that every thing was created "after its kind;" and the 

 common sense of mankind in all ages has imposed classic, 

 generic, and other names implying sections, as well as 

 specific ones, upon natural objects : and though many 

 modern Physiologists have asserted that species form the 

 only absolute division in nature; yet as all seem to allow 

 that there are groups, and many that these are repre- 

 sented by a circle or group returning into itself b , the 

 most absolute division in nature, we will not contend 

 for a term c . We now come to consider these groups 

 themselves, and may notice them under various denomi- 

 nations. 



It is customary to consider all the substances of which 

 our globe consists as divided into three kingdoms, the 



a N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xx. 485. b The idea of a conti- 



nuous series militates somewhat against that of a circle returning 

 into itself. The progression of the series may be in a circle ; but at 

 the point of contact where the second circle meets the first, the lines 

 must cut each other; and at this point of intersection of the two cir- 

 cles are of course the osculant groups constituting the first and the 

 last of each circle, which in their intervention come in contact with 

 each other, or rather forming transition groups. If each circle is re- 

 garded as absolute, the series is broken, though the osculant groups 

 connect the circular ones. , c Mr. MacLeay almost ad- 



mits that there are natural genera. Hor. JEnt. 492. 

 VOL. IV. 2 B 



