TRIVIAL OBJECTIONS IDLE. 45 



insure demonstrative certainty. It is not to the prin- 

 ciples themselves, but to the application of those prin- 

 ciples, that we object. If the system of Clairville 

 which owes all its celebrity to the use it has been 

 turned to is really the foundation of the natural ar- 

 rangement of insects, and is that by which the primary 

 groups are to be regulated, why have not their ana- 

 logies in other classes been pointed out ? If the two 

 typical classes of Mandibulata and Haustellata are really 

 natural, then they would exhibit not merely mutual re- 

 lations to each other, but equally so with all the ver- 

 tebrate animals nay, with all the primary groups of 

 the animal kingdom. Hitherto, no one has attempted 

 to do this. Neither these, nor the other supposed groups 

 in the Annulosa, have ever been brought to this test, 

 a test, however, which is imperatively demanded for all 

 groups supposed to be natural. Looking, therefore, to 

 this deficiency of proof, and to the admission by the ad- 

 vocates of this system, that they are not even prepared 

 to state which is the typical form of the Annulosa, we 

 trust, upon these grounds only, that we may be pardoned 

 for not adopting it. Gladly should we have done so, 

 for we should then have been saved an immensity of 

 research, and have been spared the necessity of dis- 

 turbing those ideas on the higher groups of entomology, 

 which are now so prevalent. 



(40.) It is an easy matter, indeed, to raise innume- 

 rable small objections against every natural system, whe- 

 ther founded upon the theory we have just been speaking 

 of, or upon that which we here promulgate ; but these 

 will always occur, while natural classification, as at 

 present, is in its infancy. On these, therefore, we have 

 not touched ; we have directed our remarks, not to such 

 comparatively trivial matters, but to the ground-work 

 of the system itself. We have long held and expressed 

 the opinion, that the comparative rank of circular 

 groups is just as definite, and is just as real, in 

 nature, as the difference between species and species. 

 In such groups, indeed, there will always be gradations, 



