450 HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



"Brevis esse laboro 



Obscurus fio " 



and makes his definitions of species, without adding a 

 description, so extremely short as to suit equally well 

 perhaps a dozen different insects. The minor groups 

 into which he has divided some of his Orders and Ge- 

 nera are sometimes natural, sometimes artificial. Those 

 of the Coleoptera, from characters drawn from their an- 

 tennae (as is evident from his arrangement of the genera 

 in that Order), are of the latter description ; while 

 those of his Aptera are more natural. The genera that 

 he has most happily laboured in this respect are his 

 Hemipterous ones of Gryllus^ Cicada^ and Cimex, and all 

 his Lepidoptera. He had such a tact for discovering na- 

 tural groups in general, that in him it seems almost to 

 have been intuitive. 



But in no respect were the labours of Linne more be- 

 neficial to the science and to Zoology in general, than 

 when he undertook to describe the animals of his own 

 country. His Fauna Suecica is an admirable exemplar, 

 which ought to stimulate the Zoologists of every country 

 to make it one of their first objects that its animal pro- 

 ductions shall no longer remain unregistered and un- 

 "described. Botanists have almost every where been di- 

 ligent in effecting this with respect to plants, but other 

 branches of Natural Tlistory have been more neglected. 

 In his Systema Naturae Linne attempted this for all the 

 productions of our globe. The idea was a vast one ; and 

 the execution, though necessarily falling far short of it, 

 did him infinite honour : and in it he has laid a founda- 

 tion for his successors to build upon till time shall be 

 no more. 



