INSECTS IN GENERAL. 



441 



regard with any degree of attention. Of these, 

 some never obtain wings at any period of their 

 existence : but are destined to creep on the ve- 

 getable, or the spot of earth, where they are 

 stationed for their whole lives. On the con- 

 prevent us from passing immediately to the microscopi- 

 cal discoveries of the celebrated Leuwenhoeck, from 

 whose inventive genius and patient observations the sci- 

 ence received such essential benefit, not more by what he 

 himself discovered, than by the foundation he laid for 

 that system of close and minute observation which alone 

 leads to truth. Our limits will only permit us to desig- 

 nate Blankaart and Geyerus, as occupying a similar rank 

 with Goedart. 



Ray, however, deserves more particular notice. His 

 descriptions are very exact and detailed, and his various 

 works, Synopis Methodica Animalium, &c., (Lond., 

 1783), Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium, (Lond., 

 1713), atid the Historia Insectorum (Lond., 1710), suf- 

 ficiently demonstrate his claim to the title of the first 

 true systematist. His was the glory of serving as a zoo- 

 logical guide to the illustrious Swedish reformer, of whom 

 we shall soon have to speak. Ray divides insects into 

 two great classes those which undergo a metamorphosis 

 after having been produced, and those which do not. 

 He again subdivides each of these classes into orders, 

 characterized by the feet, or by their absence; by their 

 habitations ; by the size or conformation of the various 

 parts of the body ; by their larvae, &c. In this arrange- 

 ment were included certain tribes of vermes, subsequently 

 separated by Linnaeus. The voluminous productions, 

 upon this subject, of the indefatigable Reaumur who di- 

 rected his researches into every department of science, 

 appeared in Paris in 6 vols., 4to., 1734. 1742. His 

 Memoires pour servir a I' Histoire des Insects for such 

 is its modest title is an admirable work, both with res- 

 pect to the number and value of the observations it con- 

 tains. It is to be lamented that the 7th volume, which 

 is completed, remains unpublished. The intended re- 

 maining ones were not commenced when Reaumur died, 

 in 1757. 



But a greater name than any we have yet mentioned 

 is that of the illustrious reformer of the nomenclature of 

 the natural sciences. Notwithstanding the labours of so 

 many ingenious, learned and acute observers of nature, 

 the history of animals, and that of insects in particular, 

 remained in a confused state until the illustrious Linnaeus 

 reduced the chaotic pile to order. Directing all the en- 

 ergies of his clear and comprehensive mind to the sub- 

 ject, he produced, in his well known Systema Naturae, 

 1735, the first truly methodical work. In a final edition 

 of the same book, we find an arrangement of insects dif- 

 fering from that contained in the former; and, as that is 

 the one always referred to at the present day, and as his 

 divisions are, to a certain extent, still retained, we deem 

 it proper to notice it here. He divides insects into 

 caleoptera, hemoptera, lepidoptera, neuroptera, hymenop- 

 tera, diptera, and aptera. In this class were also inclu- 

 ded the Crustacea and arachnides, now forming the first 

 and second classes of the third great division of the ani- 

 mal kingdom, or the animalia articulata. The system 

 of Linnaeus, though not a natural one, was well adapted 

 to the limited number of animals then known, and which, 

 with respect to insects, did not exceed 800 or 900. Its 

 subsequent alterations necessarily arose from the immense 

 number of new ones which the increasing zeal of obser- 

 vers detected in every part of the globe. 



L'Admiral, Letharding, Lesser, Degeer, Roesel, Sco- 

 poli, and Geoffrey, all contributed and some of them 

 greatly, to multiply facts and detect errors. Lyonnet, 

 however, merits something more than the bare mention 

 of his name. Animated by a zeal that no disappoint- 

 muit could damp, and armed with a patience that set 



VOL. ii. 



trary, others are only candidates for a more 

 happy situation ; and only wait their growing 

 wings, when they may be said to arrive at their 

 state of full perfection. 



Those that never have wings, but creep 



obstacles at defiance, this untiring inquirer devoted seven 

 years of his life to the anatomy of a single insect the 

 larva of a species of cossus that inhabits the willow. The 

 plates of his work, the Traitf Anatomique de la Chenille 

 du Saule (4to., 1762), eighteen in number, were all en- 

 graved by his own hand, with a minuteness, fidelity, and 

 elegance that have seldom, if ever, been equalled. The 

 ensemble is pronounced, by the greatest authority of our 

 age, a chef-d'oeuvre both of anatomy and engraving. 



We cannot stop to notice particularly the labours of 

 Schseffer, Seba, Forster, and Drury, each of whom added 

 something to the general fund of knowledge. With res- 

 pect to those of Fabricius, it is otherwise. This cele- 

 brated entomologist, and pupil of Linnaeus, published nu- 

 merous and valuable works on his favourite science, of 

 which we will only cite the Entomologia Systcmatica, 

 emendata et aucta (4 vols., 8vo., 17921794), the Sup. 

 plementum Entomologice Systematicce (1798), and the 

 Systema Eleutheratorum,, Rhyngotorum, &c., (from 1801 

 to 1805). He was the first who had recourse to the 

 parts of the mouth, or organs of manducation, as a basis 

 of distribution ; and a vast number of new species of in- 

 sects were described by him, in his remarkably concise 

 but clear manner, with which Gmelin, a naturalist, or 

 or rather editor, of a very different class, enriched the 

 Systema of Linnaeus. The splendid and costly works of 

 Oliver (5 vols., fol., Paris, 17S9 1808), Donovan 

 (London, 17781805), Palisot de Beauvois, (Paris, 

 fol., 1805, et seq.) Cramer, (4 vols., 4to, with 400 col- 

 oured plates, Amsterdam, 1779, continued by Stoll, in 

 1 vol., 4to., 1790 et seq.), together with a multitude of 

 others of a less magnificent description, bring our sketch 

 down to a period in the annals of the natural sciences 

 which is graced by the name of Cuvier. It is to him 

 that we are indebted for what is termed the natural me- 

 thod, or an arrangement in which, to use his own words, 

 " all beings of the same genus are placed nearer to each 

 other than to those of all other genera of the same order 

 similarly disposed with respect to those of all other or- 

 ders, &c." The energy and discrimination of this mo- 

 dern oracle of the natural sciences, as he has justly been 

 styled, aided by untiring industry, have fixed the foun- 

 dations of zoology upon the immutable basis of compara- 

 tive anatomy. From the moment his Table au elemen- 

 taire de V Histoire naturelle des Animaux, and his Le~ 

 cons d 1 Anatomic Comparee, made their appearance, the 

 entomologist, in common with the cultivators of every 

 other branch of zoology, was sensible that he at last held 

 the clew by which he could hope to traverse the hitherto 

 impracticable labyrinth. The study now became a 

 greater object of interest than ever. Lamarck produced 

 his work upon invertebral animals, and Latreille, guided 

 by Cuvier, soon gave to the world his famous entomologi- 

 cal system. 



Among the modern writers of eminence on the sub. 

 ject of insects, MacLeay, Leach, and Kirby stand pre- 

 eminent in England. Prussia boasts of her Klug and 

 Illiger; Germany of her Knoch, Mannerheim, and Ger- 

 mar ; Russia of her Fischer ; Sweden of her Paykull, 

 Gyllenhal, and Schoenherr ; and France, that favourite 

 seat of science, gave birth to Latreille, the greatest of 

 entomologists. There, too, count Dejean is busied with 

 his admirable work on coleopterous insects, which, when 

 completed, will leave nothing to be desired with respect 

 to that order. Leon Dufour,of the same country, by his 

 various memoirs on the anatomy of a new species of 

 brachinus, on that of the coleoptcra, of the cicaderiee, of 

 the cicadella, of the forfifulce, &c., has given ample 

 SK 



