432 HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



he has referred to them incidentally, it is generally with 

 this latter view. 



If we turn from the word and people of GOD to the 

 Lovers of Wisdom (as they modestly styled themselves) of 

 the heathen world, and their writings ; we shall discern 

 amongst them a great light shining, the beams of which 

 illuminate even our own'times. In the illustrious Stagy- 

 rite we recognize " The father of philosophy, at least 

 of our philosophy, who, rising superior to the darkness 

 in which he lived, darted his penetrating glance through 

 all nature, and established principles which a long course 

 of ages of inquiry have but confirmed. With Aristotle 

 begins the real History of science : and how much so- 

 ever he may have erred upon particular points, the great- 

 ness of his conceptions and the justness of his ideas, on 

 the whole entitle him to our high veneration. His la- 

 bours in the investigation of the Animal Kingdom have 

 laid the foundation of the knowledge we now possess 9 ." 

 This language of the lamented and learned President of 

 the Linnean Society is particularly applicable to what 

 this great and original genius has effected in Entomo- 

 logy. We have seen upon a former occasion 13 , that 

 Linne himself had not those precise ideas of the limits 

 of the Class Insecta, which Aristotle so many centuries 

 before him had adopted. In stating the obligations of 

 Entomology to this true sfavatit, I shall begin by laying 

 before you a tabular view of what may be called his 

 system, as far as I have been able to collect it from his 

 works, especially his History of Animals. 



a Linn. Trans, i. 5. b VOL. III. p. G. 



