180 Prof. J. C. Schiodte on the Classification 



geschichte, 1841, i. p. 62). He admits that very much will 

 be gained for the classification of insects by a more accurate 

 knowledge of their earlier stages ; but at the same time he warns 

 us against entertaining too high expectations as if the pi-ogress 

 of classification principally depended on the study of the meta- 

 morphoses, and he urges particularly that we must not suppose 

 that a classification according to the larvae would always coincide 

 with a classification according to imagos. He mentions by 

 way of illustration that one would naturally expect a great simi- 

 larity between the larvse of Buprestidse and those of Elateridse, 

 which does not x'eally exist, and that the larva of Melasis would 

 make a nearer approach to the Elater-type than to the Buprestis- 

 type, whereas the reverse is rather the case. A couple of pages 

 further on he suras up his remarks in this general result — that, 

 although it would not be possible to build a classification on the 

 structure of the larvse, it will nevertheless be of the greatest 

 importance, nay, decidedly necessary, to take that point into 

 consideration, as it will always do good service as a means of 

 testing classifications founded on other principles, — a general 

 statement which I have no doubt sounds so very qualified prin- 

 cipally because he was checked by the idea that Buprestidse and 

 Elateridse are very nearly allied to one another, though their 

 larvse are so difierent, and by the apparently anomalous relations 

 of the larva of Melasis. But for these points being present to 

 his mind, his verdict would have been much fuller and more 

 decided. These words, like so many others which have pro- 

 ceeded from the celebrated entomologist — too early taken away 

 from his bright scientific career — have awakened an echo in many 

 a dark corner, and since served as a principal support for the 

 often repeated and convenient assertion that the earlier stages of 

 insects correspond in many cases so little to the relationships of 

 the imagos, that they even at times vary more according to spe- 

 cies than generally according to genera or families. And thus 

 it has come about that this view of the larva of Melasis now 

 stands as a sort of barrier in front of an immense tract of 

 scientific fallow land, which only by the razing of that barrier 

 can be made available for new culture. 



And this barrier indeed seems indestructible ; for how could 

 anybody presume to doubt that the larva of Melasis, which 

 presents such a striking external similarity to the typical larva 

 of Buprestes, also burrows in timber like the latter, seeing that 

 we possess minute accounts of it by such able entomologists as 

 Nordlinger* and Perrisf, the former of these having, as well as 

 GuerinJ, even supplied us with drawings of its burrows, galle- 



* Stettin, entom. Zeit. (1848) pp. 225-226, t. 1. fig. 2. 



t Ann. de la Soc, Entom. de Fr. ser. 2. v. 648. J Ibid. i. pi. 5. fig. 4. 



