12 



not to alter them : he thought it enough to acknowledge without 

 striving to amend them ; in fact, he really seems to have consi- 

 dered the natural system, like the philosopher's stone, a mere ens 

 imaginationis, the pursuit of which would be but a waste of time : 

 he doubted not its existence, but he doubted man's ability to 

 discover it. 



Such was natural history when Mr. MacLeay's immortal work 

 first diffused its splendour over the world. The power of thought, 

 the profound research which he there exhibited, and the confes- 

 sion that " he was one of those who preferred an imperfect 

 transitory glimpse of nature pure and unveiled, to a full view of 

 the most commodious and ostentatious mantle that could be em- 

 ployed to conceal her features from the gaze,"* were such novel- 

 ties in the science, that men scarcely credited their understandings : 

 they began thinking, and have continued to think until the term 

 naturalist is not, as it was but a short time back, immeasurably 

 separated from that of philosopher. The extraordinary merit of 

 the Horce Entomologicce consists, not merely in disclosing and 

 elucidating the invaluable fact, that a series of affinities, naturally 

 arranged, has a constant tendency to describe a circle which 

 eventually returns into itself: a still more important feature of 

 the work is, that unceasing and determined endeavour evinced by 

 its learned author to seek after, weigh, and examine facts, and to 

 employ these alone in the support of his theories,^ — an endeavour 

 indicative of that only true spirit of philosophy which has and can 

 have no other end in view than the establishment of truth. 



That I suppose Mr. MacLeay to have mistaken the number 

 which nature has adopted in the combination and distribution of 

 her various tribes — that J. totally dissent from his idea of analogies 

 and affinities, and from his division or rather adoption of Clairville's 

 division of insects into mandibulate and haustellate, will be suffi- 

 ciently evident from the contents of this little Essay ; but in these 

 and all other instances, in which I feel myself bound to disclose 

 any difference of opinion which may tend to reveal or establish 

 truth, I hope I shall always be found urging my objections with 

 the deference due to an author from whose works I have extracted 



* Horae Entomologicae, preface, p. xxiv. 



