SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 4-15 



portunity of consulting at his ease one of the first Ento- 

 mological cabinets in Europe, in a work that will for 

 ever couple his name with the science that he cultivates 2 , 

 has first taught the Naturalist the respective value and 

 real distinctions of the two kinds of relationship that I 

 am now discussing. He has opened to the philosopher, 

 the moralist and the divine, that hitherto closed door by 

 which our first parents and their immediate descendants 

 entered the temple of nature, and studied the symbols of 

 knowledge that were there presented to them : and in 

 addition to his labours (in numerous respects successful), 

 in endeavouring to trace out the natural groups of beings 

 connected by affinity, has pointed out how they illustrate 

 each other by analogy; thus affording, as was before ob- 

 served b , a most triumphant reply to the arguments of 

 those modern sophists, who, from the graduated scale of 

 affinities observable in creation, were endeavouring to 

 prove that animals, in the lapse of ages, were in fact their 

 own creators . 



For the more satisfactory elucidation of the subject 

 before us, I shall consider, first, how we are to distinguish 

 affinities from analogies ; and then mention some of the 

 various instances of the latter that occur between insects 

 and other animals, and between different tribes of in- 

 sects themselves. 



To know what characters denote affinity and what 

 are merely analogical, it must be kept in mind that the 

 former being predicated of beings in a series (whether 

 that series has its gyrations that return into themselves, 

 or proceeds in a right line, or assumes any other inter- 



a Horce Entomological. b VOL. III. p. 173 . 



c Ibid. p. 348. note c . 



