HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 4-39 



it, has rendered it still more at variance with nature and 

 Aristotle : I mean the celebrated Vallisnieri, to whom 

 in other respects, though in this he fell behind his age, 

 the science was unjjer great obligations. He divides 

 insects into, 1. Those that inhabit vegetable substances 

 living or dead. 2. Those that inhabit any kind offatid 

 and in any state. 3. Those that inhabit any earthy or 

 mineral substances, dead bones, or shells. And 4-. Those 

 that inhabit living animals a . 



The work that is usually called Mouffet's Theatrum 

 Insectorum was produced in the present era, and was the 

 fruit of the successive labours of several men of talent. 

 Dr. Edward Wotton and the celebrated Conrade Ges- 

 ner laid the foundation ; whose manuscripts falling into 

 the hands of Dr. Thomas Penny, an eminent physician 

 and botanist of the Elizabethan age b , much devoted to 

 the study of insects, he upon this foundation meditated 

 raising a superstructure which should include a complete 

 history of these animals ; and with this view he devoted 

 the leisure hours of fifteen years of his life to the study 

 of every book then extant that treated of the science 

 either expressly or incidentally, and to the description 

 and figuring of such insects as he could procure ; but 

 before he had reduced his materials to order, in 1589 he 

 was snatched away by an untimely death. His unfinished 

 manuscripts were purchased at a considerable price by 

 Mouffet, a contemporary physician of singular learning , 

 who reduced them to order, improved the style, added 

 new matter, and not less than 150 additional figures; and 



a Esferienz. cd Osserv. i. 42 . 



h Pulteney's Sketches of Botany in England, \. 86. 



c Thcatr. Insect. Epist. Dcd, i. 



