4 NATURA'L ARRANGEMENT OF INSECTS. 



perfect of all vertebrate animals. The metamorphosis 

 of insects,, however, has heen invested with so much im- 

 portance by some writers, that we shall hereafter return 

 to it more fully, when treating of those divisions in 

 which it is most strikingly developed. 



(5.) The rank of the Annulosa, in the great circle 

 of the animal creation, has more than once been ad- 

 verted to in our former volumes : they are inferior 

 only to the vertebrate animals in being, as a whole, 

 less highly organised, or rather by having a less com- 

 plicated structure. These distinctions, on the other 

 hand, place them far above the three other great di- 

 visions of animals,, namely, the Testacea, the Radiata, 

 and the Acrita. Their superiority over these is so self- 

 evident, that it seems impossible to conceive how any 

 naturalist who takes nature for his guide, could think of 

 placing the headless and almost inanimate oyster higher 

 in the scale of creation than the bee and the ant, be- 

 cause the former happens to have a heart, while the 

 latter have none. This outrage upon natural clas- 

 sification is one of the many instances which result 

 from making internal structure the sole basis of scien- 

 tific arrangement. It has originated, not from the 

 legitimate use, but the abuse of our increased acquaint- 

 ance with internal structure. There are professors of 

 comparative anatomy, able but mistaken men, who are 

 now striving to overthrow all received notions on na- 

 tural affinities, and to substitute in their room certain 

 dogmas of their own, founded on minute peculiarities 

 of internal structure which they hold superior to all 

 others. Against these speculative modes of classification 

 we have frequently been obliged to enter our protest: 

 it tends to render that which nature has made plain to 

 every one, comprehensible to none but the closet pro- 

 fessor. It increases rather than lessens the difficulties 

 which already beset the study of zoology, and renders 

 it a dry, repulsive study of bones and muscles. In re- 

 ference to that theory, more particularly, which places 



