EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 395 



closely and attentively I regard the structure of that portion of 

 animals to which my present observations will be exclusively 

 confined, the more thoroughly am I convinced that this branch 

 of science is yet in its very infancy. I may perhaps be re- 

 minded that Lyonnet, Leon Dufour, Chabrier, Herold, and 

 Straus-Durckheim, have, by their unconquerable industry and 

 surpassing skill, accomplished wonders ;■ — I may be told that 

 Savigny, Andouin, and MacLeay, have, by the vigour and 

 comprehensiveness of their minds, and their extraordinary 

 talent in the application of observations, arrived at great and 

 important results ; — and I am willing to admit all this ; — but, 

 though great the researches in this science, and apposite their 

 application, the same objection may be taken to them all, 

 that they tend to illustrate a theory in itself evidently false, 

 rather than to find out and establish plain and solid truths. 

 It appears to me somewhat singular, that entomological 

 writers, who have so boldly and unceremoniously attacked 

 and altered the disposition and nomenclature of the groups 

 proposed by Linnaeus, should without exception have reli- 

 giously adhered to that erroneous and artificial disposition 

 and nomenclature of external parts, from which his principal 

 faults in grouping and systematic arrangement have arisen. 

 All nomenclature of parts, which have only ideal limits, I 

 would contend that common sense commands us to discon- 

 tinue, believing that no name for any portion of an animal, 

 the limits of which portion are unsettled or optional with the 

 describer, and have no existence in nature, can be suitably 

 retained or philosophically employed. In the comparative 

 anatomy of higher animals we trace the same part through 

 an almost infinite variety of modifications, yet apply to it the 

 same name, and assign as characters its variations, as the 

 variations of a single part; in the comparative anatomy of 

 insects we can with ease detect the presence of the principal 

 pails in every individual, yet have hitherto assigned such parts 

 no common name, but name them variously according to their 

 variations.'' In examining a particular portion of an insect, 



" Even this is more than we always accomplish. In turning over for the pur- 

 pose twenty consecutive pages of two of the most highly esteemed British works 

 on entomology, I find the most important segment of an insect is described or 

 alluded to under the following names : — manitrunciis ; collare ; coUum ; thorax ; 



