400 SYSTEM OF-JNSECTS. 



With regard to their characters, we are not to place 

 our groups upon Procrustes' bed, and lop or torture 

 them to accommodate them to every standard we may 

 have fixed for them : assuming one set of characters for 

 suborders, another for tribes, arid so for every other 

 group ; for the value of characters varies, those that in 

 some cases are common *to an Order, in others indicate 

 only sections, or tribes, or genera and species, or some- 

 times even sexes. What is constant in one group is not 

 so in another, and vice versa; so that it is a vain labour 

 to search for a universal character. If it is our wish 

 really to trace the labyrinth of nature, we can only ac- 

 complish it by a careful perusal and examination of her 

 various groups. It is singular how much and how far 

 various Entomologists, and those of the very highest 

 class, have been misled by a kind of favouritism to give 

 too universal a currency to certain characters for which 

 they have conceived a predilection. Some have been 

 the champions of the antennae ; others of the trophi ; 

 others again of the wings ; and others of the metamor- 

 phosis. These are all characters which within certain 

 limits lead us right, and are an index to a natural group; 

 but if we follow them further, we leave the system of na- 

 ture, and are perplexed in the mazes of a method*. 



Let us now see whether we can pitch upon any sub- 

 order which will afford an example of every group that 

 we have lately named. Mr. MacLeay, from a consi- 

 deration of the larvae of that Order, has divided the Co- 

 leoptera into five primary groups that may be denomi- 

 nated Suborders. Whether these are all natural groups 



a See above, p. 365. 



