OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 27 



But it is not merely in travellers and popular observers that the want of 

 a systematic knowledge of Entomology is so deplorable. A great portion 

 of the labours of the profoundest naturalists has been from a similar cause 

 lost to the world. Many of the insects concerning which Reaumur and 

 Bonnet have recorded the most interesting circumstances, cannot, from 

 their neglect of system, be at this day ascertained.' The former, as Beck- 

 mann 2 states on the authority of his letters, was before his death sensible 

 of his great error in this respect ; but Bonnet, with singular inconsistency, 

 constantly maintained the inutility of system, even on an occasion when, 

 from his ignorance of it, Sir James Smith, speaking of his experiments on 

 the barberry, found it quite impossible to make him comprehend what 

 plant he referred to. 3 



So great is the importance of a systematic arrangement of insects. Yet 

 no such arrangement has hitherto been completed. Various fragments 

 towards it, indeed, exist. But the work itself is in the state of a dictionary 

 wanting a considerable proportion of the words of the language it professes 

 to explain ; and placing those which it does contain in an order often so 

 arbitrary and defective, that it is difficult to discover even the page con- 

 taining the word you are in search of. Can it be denied, then, that they 

 ire most meritoriously employed who devote themselves to the removal of 

 these defects to the perfecting of the system and to clearing the path of 

 future economical or physiological observers from the obstructions which 

 now beset it ? And who that knows the vast extent of the science, and 

 how impossible it is that a divided attention can embrace the whole, will 

 contend that it is not desirable that some labourers in the field of litera- 

 ture should devote themselves entirely and exclusively to this object? 

 Who that is aware of the importance of the comprehensive views of a 

 Fabricius, an Illiger, or a Latreille, and the infinite saving of time of which 

 their inquiries will be productive to their followers, will dispute their claim 

 to rank amongst the most honourable in science ? 



II. No objection, I think, now remains against addicting ourselves to 

 entomological pursuits, but that which seems to have the most weight with 

 you, and which indeed is calculated to make the deepest impression upon 

 the best minds I mean the charge of inhumanity and cruelty. That the 

 science of Entomology cannot be properly cultivated without the death of 

 its objects, and that this is not to be effected without putting them to some 

 pain, must be allowed ; but that this substantiates the charge of cruelty, I 

 altogether deny. Cruelty is an unnecessary infliction of suffering, when a 

 person is fond of torturing or destroying God's creatures from mere wan- 

 tonness, with no useful end in view ; or when, if their death be useful and 

 lawful, he has recourse to circuitous modes of killing them where direct 

 ones would answer equally well. This is cruelty, and this with you I 

 abominate ; but not the infliction of death when a just occasion calls for it. 



They who see no cruelty in the sports of the field, as they are called, can 

 never, of course, consistently allege such a charge against the Entomologist; 

 the tortures of wounded birds, of fish that swallow the hook and break the 



1 No one knew Reaumur's Abeille Tapissiere, until Latreille, happily combining 

 system with attention to the economy of insects, proved it to be a new species 

 his Megachile Papaveris. Hist, de Fourmis, 297. 



2 Bibliothek, vii. 310. 



3 Tour on the Continent, iii. 150. 



