33G COLLOQUIA ENTOMOLOGICA. 



near approach to truth ; but we may gather, here and there, 

 some scattered rays which may help us in our search : did we 

 possess a knowledge of the major parts of the productions of 

 nature, we might possibly, by paying strict attention to 

 internal as well as external conformation, and by placing 

 together species, genera, and higher divisions, -whenever we 

 detected a relationship, thus covering some immense place 

 with the objects themselves, and having them all under view 

 at once, we might possibly make a near approach to, if not 

 actually discover, the true natural position of each and all. 

 How delicious to the theorist, to see creation thus arrayed, 

 like a huge army, before him. I think I have said, some- 

 where, that that system is the most natural which preserves 

 the most affinities, and breaks the fewest. 



Ent. Were it not still better to arrange them before the 

 mental eye ; that eye, whose gaze stops not with space, whose 

 vision is uninterrupted by material grossness. Often, often 

 the waking dreams of the night-watches of my childhood have 

 presented to my imagination the picture you describe; and 

 now, now creation spreads itself before me, and each being 

 that lives, each being that I have seen, or heard of, or read of, 

 or thought of, or dreamt of, assimilates with its kind and 

 assumes its appointed place : all is harmonious and glorious 

 order ; and the mind gazes in exstasy, till, inebriated with 

 thoughts of delight, it dances before the phantom it has raised. 



Erro. I believe it. 



Ent. *' Sphinx Vespiformis" gained me much ill-will. 



Erro. To be sure it did ; it set so completely at defiance 

 the quackery of the day ; " and," says Bacon, " all men 

 oppose with intense hatred him who first proposes an im- 

 portant alteration or evident improvement, because the very 

 act implies that they have been previously in blind error ; and, 

 moreover, the sudden unexpected appeai'ance of such a work 

 conveys to them the humiliating assurance that the author has 

 not considered the knowing ones worth consulting on the 

 subject. Genius has thus ever engendered envy and dislike 

 among the minors, and has consequently been always, in 

 some degree, a bar to fame. Let in the light upon a nest of 

 young owls, and they forthwith cry out against the injury you 

 have done them. Men of mediocrity are young owls ; when 

 you present them with strong and brilliant ideas, they instantly 



