INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THli VINE. 



119 



of insects, the meaning of which is easy to be understood, remain, 

 because they have become part of languages now in use, 

 derived from ancient ones : others, more obscure than these, 

 the meaning of which was doubtful or unknown, were 

 employed by naturalists for the numerous genera whose 

 establishment the progress of modern science had rendered 

 requisite. Naturalists seemed determined to make no new 

 names until all those employed by the ancients were exhausted ; 

 and when at length this came to pass, with but one exception, 

 (that of M. Adanson,) they always derived them from the 

 Greek and Latin : and when they had given a name used in 

 ancient writers to a new genus, it was hardly ever with the 

 intention of applying it to the kind of insect these ancient 

 authors had intended to allude to, and without any design of 

 its assisting in any way to ascertain the species. It has been 

 sometimes considered sufficient authority for giving an ancient 

 name to a new genus, that that name formerly belonged to an 

 insect (no matter what), or in some instances even if it could 

 not be satisfactorily proved that the word had not been so 

 applied. 



Some names occur in our entomological catalogues whose 

 meaning is so entirely lost, that it is very uncertain whether 

 they belong to a plant or an animal. My purpose will be 

 best served here if I illustrate this by an example, which is far 

 from being the only one I could adduce. 



M. Camus, the French translator of Aristotle's Natural 

 History of Animals, a well observes in his notes that com- 

 mentators differ as to the meaning of the word Staphylinus 

 employed by that writer. Some consider it the name of an 

 insect, others the name of a plant ; but, says Camus, relying 

 on the authority of Valmont de Bomare's Dictionary of Natural 

 History, where he found the word staphylinus, " The staphy- 

 linus is an insect well known to naturalists, because it has 

 preserved its name both in French and Latin." We learn 

 from these words that Camus did not know that the application 

 of the word staphylinus to a genus of coleopterous insects, 

 which is now subdivided into a great number of genera to 

 which other names have been given, cannot be traced farther 

 back than the time of Linnagus, who first made use of this 



3 Camus, Hist. Nat. dcs Animaux d'Aristote, in ■ko. t. ii, p. 783. 



