OPINIONS ON MR. NEWMAN's SPHINX VESPIFORMIS. 281 



occur, and this can only be accomplished by placing them as 

 Mr. Newman has placed them. 



Lastly, I turn to what I consider the greatest of modern 

 discoveries in natural history, viz. the existence of central 

 types ; and on this subject I must remark, that I think Mr. 

 Newman has very injudiciously selected the most difficult and 

 intricate part of the whole system for the exemplification of 

 his theory ; and in this he seems to rejoice, and to hew down 

 and trample on the labours of the numberless industrious 

 drudges who have been, so long and with such little success, 

 toiling in the same path ; the cavalier-like manner in which 

 these, the ladders by which he has mounted, are thrown 

 down, may, perhaps, be supposed indicative of conscious 

 superiority, but certainly not of that kind and indulgent 

 feeling which every naturalist ought to entertain towards his 

 fellow-labourers ; nor can I hold it in any way safe or credit- 

 able to one who stands himself upon a slippery place. The 

 Carabi, the Staphylini, the Dytici, present groups in which, 

 from their excellently described distinctive character, the 

 number of their species accessible in cabinets, and from the 

 little necessity there is of reverting to their larvae, might 

 readily be made useful in pursuing an inquiry of this kind ; 

 but the PlialcBuce have very few characters, and these ill- 

 recorded or almost undiscovered, and the accessible species 

 are very limited and principally unnamed. How far Mr. 

 Newman has succeeded in his conclusions from these, I am not 

 capable of deciding, but no one can doubt for an instant the 

 existence of central types ; indeed, it seems one of those 

 obvious truths which remain for a long time hidden, and 

 which, when discovered, astonish us by their very simplicity. 

 I can scarcely describe the pleasure I have felt in ranging the 

 aberrant groups round the types. Procerus, Dyticus, Hy- 

 drous, Lttcamis, &c. In my Tenihredincs I have given 

 Cimhex the centre, and have surrounded my hornet by a 

 phalanx of wasps. These remarks may perhaps appear of 

 little value : my object is to induce entomologists to go into 

 the subject thus practically as I have done, and to impress on 

 them this mathematical inference, that, granting the existence 

 of circles, and of a central circle surrounded with others, then 

 six is the only number that can so surround it, and the number 

 seven consequently becomes established. 



