HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 453 



We next come to one of the greatest names in Ento- 

 mology, the celebrated De Geer, who united in himself 

 the highest merit of almost every department of that 

 science. Both as a systematist, anatomist, and phy- 

 siologist, and as the observant historian of the man- 

 ners and economy of insects, his Memoires pour servir 

 a V Histoire des Insectes are above all praise. His 

 system a is contained in a posthumous volume published 

 in 1778 b . 



This system, though built upon the instruments of 

 flight ; in its ternary groups, equivalent to the Orders of 

 Linne, adds likewise the instruments of manducation, 

 and is thus intermediate between that of Linne and Fa- 

 bricius, who perhaps from the consideration of it might 

 derive the first idea of assuming the last-mentioned or- 

 gans as the basis of a new method. But, though pai% 

 taking of both, it is nearer to nature than either ; and 

 had its illustrious author laid less stress upon the number 

 and substance of the organs of flight, it would probably 

 have been as near perfection in this respect as most that 

 have succeeded it. But following too strictly these cha- 

 racters, he has been led to place in different Classes, or 

 rather Orders, insects that ought not to have been so se- 

 parated, as in the case of the two sections of the Hemi- 

 ptera, and the Coccidce. In other respects the whole of 

 De Geer's Memoires are a storehouse of valuable observa- 

 tions, in which he has furnished many a clue for thread- 

 ing the labyrinth of nature, and given most complete 

 and interesting histories of the whole economy and ha- 



3 See the opposite page. 



h The first volume of his Memoires was published in 1752. 



