12 NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF INSECTS. 



principle so general, we have every reason to believe it 

 must be also true in the present instance. What person, 

 in fact,, whether naturalist or not, who knows any thing 

 of the bee or the ant, would ever think of classing them 

 as inferior in the scale of creation to a spider, a wood- 

 louse, or a scorpion ? Now the group which contains 

 these two highly-gifted families is that of Ptilota, which 

 we consequently infer is the typical class of the Annulosa. 

 This question, after all, is purely speculative, for whether 

 we reverse our original position, and adopt the op- 

 posite opinion before mentioned, it will have no effect 

 whatever in altering that progression of affinity which 

 results from analysis. Affinities must be traced in de- 

 tail, and therefore analysis is the only sure road which 

 the investigator of the natural system should venture 

 upon in his first advances. Analogies must be discovered 

 after : they are, indeed, indispensable, but they are not 

 to supersede the facts resulting from analysis. It will 

 frequently happen that from ignorance, either of habits or 

 structure, we are at one time unable to trace the analogies 

 of two groups, which subsequent information has proved 

 to be analogous. 



(11.) The analogies now shown to exist between the 

 primary groups of the vertebrate animals, and those 

 in which we have distributed the Annulosa, leads to se- 

 veral conclusions, not at first apparent, yet intimately 

 bearing on several questions of the highest importance. 

 In the first place, presuming this exposition is correct, 

 we arrive at a definite conclusion on the rank or value 

 of the groups thus brought into comparison. Those, 

 indeed, of the Vertebrata have been long ago settled, 

 not only by the common consent of the most eminent 

 modern zoologists, but by the searching analysis to which 

 they have been submitted in our former volumes. 

 We know, moreover, that as the Annulosa form one of 

 the primary divisions of the animal kingdom, its con- 

 tents cannot be correctly distributed, unless they cor- 

 respond, in some measure, with the contents of the 



