376 SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 



Aristotle, had reference to this circumstance. But this 

 alone does not afford characters sufficiently discrimina- 

 ting : for though to an accurate observer a difference in 

 these organs appears to be characteristic of most of the 

 Orders, yet in some it is not easily detected or defined. 

 In the Neuroptera there are as many different types of 

 wings as there are of tribes or suborders. So that it 

 seems not possible so to construct the definition of every 

 Order, as to take its character from the organs of flight 

 alone. Linne was sensible of this, and was compelled 

 to have recourse to subsidiary characters in the majority 

 of his : his observation therefore with regard to Genera, 

 that the character does not give the genus, but the 

 genus the character 1 , applies equally to Orders; and the 

 characters included in the definition of an Order, should 

 be the result of a careful examination of its component 

 groups. 



On a former occasion I named to you the Orders into 

 which it appeared to me the Class Insecta might be di- 

 vided b ; they were these. Coleoptera ; Strepsiptera : 

 Dermaptera ; Orlhoptera ; Hemiptera ; Trichoptera ; 

 Lepidoptera ; Neuroptera ; Plymenoptera ; Diptera ; 

 Aphaniptera ; Aptera. I then briefly explained them 

 merely for the sake of illustration, and that you might 

 know .what description of insects were meant when 

 these Orders were mentioned in my letters, without in- 

 tending to affirm that I had arranged them in a natural 

 series, or that all of them were perfectly natural. I shall 



a Scias Characterem non constituere Genus, scd Genus Charac- 

 tcrem ; Characterem fluere e Genere, non Genus e Charactere ; Cha- 

 racterem non esse ut Genus fiat, sed tit Genus noscatur. Philos. 

 Botan. m. 169. b VOL. I. p. 66, note a . 



