64 Mr. W. S. M AC LE A V 071 the Structure of the Tarsus 



characteristic, Me may daily perceive that accurate observation 

 remains still a desideratum, merely because we are too apt to 

 despise minutiae and too ready to adopt the recorded obser- 

 \ations of others as true, for no other reason than because they 

 are so recorded. A curious instance of this facility in trusting 

 to the observations of others I shall proceed to explain ; not 

 merely because it has led myself as well as all other modern ento- 

 mologists into very inaccurate descriptions, but because a system 

 of arrangement, and that system the very one which is most pre- 

 valent on the Continent at the present day, has been founded 

 among coleopterous insects upon such false descriptions. 



Geotlroy appears to have been the first to observe that the 

 loints of the tarsi varied in number among Coleoptera, and also 

 to have been the first to make use of this variation in forming a 

 system of arrangement for the order*. In alluding to this system 

 of Geoffroy, M. Latreille says, " L'ouvrage de ce célèbre natu- 

 raliste est peut-être celui qui a le plus contribué aux progrès de 

 l'Entomologie, du moins en France. On lui doit la découverte 

 du caractère important, pris du nombre des articles des tarses, 

 caractère qui a par sa constance une plus grande valeur que celui 

 que fournissent les antennes." ( Lnt. IJi^t. Naf. des Crust, et Ins. ii. 

 300.) M. Dumeril improved upon Geoffroy 's sketch ; while 

 M. Latreille and the other French naturalists fancied that the}" 

 had found a key to a natural arrangement, the honour of which 

 would indisputably belong to France. In the Genera Tnsectorum 

 of M. Latreille, a work which has occasioned the tarsal system 

 to be generally adopted not merely in France but throughout 

 Europet, we find that the great order of Coleoptera is divided into 



five 



* De Gcer, Man. pour F J list. <ks Ins. vol. iv. p. 7. 



t Until the publication of the first number of the Anmdosa Jaranicd, no English 

 entomologist had so far broken through the trammels of this system as to arrange insects 

 in opposition to it, except Dr. Leach, who in the 3rd volume of the Zoological Miscet- 



lani/ 



