30 



facts which exist only in my imagination, I am perfectly willing 

 to conclude that no such insect is to be found ; a conclusion that 

 time and discovery, by falsifying, can only add yet one more 

 buttress to a tower, which nature seems to point out as built by 

 herself. 



There are a few little insects which, like the spiders which 

 crept across Richard's brain, are somewhat perplexing to the 

 naturalist, yet he cannot dispose of them as the monarch did 

 of liis spiders ; I mean Pulex, Stylops, Thrips, Forficula. But, 

 in truth, the first attempt of the systematist should be to place 

 classes properly, and these disconnected species will, after a 

 time, find appropriate places : they were no more created without 

 a design than man ; and their Creator, doubtless, has appointed 

 them a station, although man, whose wisdom is utter ignorance, 

 has not yet been able to discover it. It is impossible for the 

 entomologist not to observe the general similarity, the family 

 likeness if I may so express it, which exists between these 

 genera ; they appear a little way removed from Coleoptera, yet 

 will not harmoniously join that class. Thrips is evidently man- 

 dibulated, although the dichotomists call it haustellated, and 

 comes nearer to Stylops* than any other known genus : its larva 

 is, I believe, unknown ; but in March you may observe an active 

 hexapod, lizard-like animal, running about the flowers of Ran- 

 unculus ficaria on sunny banks, and two or three months later you 

 will find Thrips abundant on the same flowers in the same spots : 

 this is no proof of their identity; but as the larva of Thrips 

 and the imago of the said hexapod are equally unknown, there 

 may be a surmise expressed on the subject. Mr. Kirby calls 

 this hexapod Pediculus Melittse, and has given a description and 

 plate of it in his Monographia Apum.\ He there asserts that 

 De Geer considered it the larva of the Meloe proscarabaeus, and 

 some observations of my esteemed friend, Mr. Doubleday, who 



* For a beautiful and accurate figure and dissections of this rare insect, 

 t;ee Curtis's Entomology, pi. 226 : for a popular figure, Prqfessor-edly of the 

 same insect, see Insect Transformations, p. 67. 



A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. 



Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. 



t Monographia Apum, Vol. J I. p. lOS. 



