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V RE FACE*. 
OVERWHELMED with scientific labours, and yielding, perhaps 
too easily, to the impulse of friendship and to my desire to serve him, 
M. Cuvier has confided to me that portion of this work which treats 
of Insects. 
These animals were the objects of his earliest zoological studies, 
and the cause of his connexion with one of the most celebrated pupils 
of Linnaeus, Fabricius, who in his writings gives him frequent assur- 
ance of his high esteem. It was even by various interesting obser- 
vations on several of these animals — Journal d’Hist. Nat . — that 
M. Cuvier commenced his career in natural history. Entomology, 
in common with all the other branches of Zoology, has derived the 
greatest advantage from his anatomical researches, and the happy 
changes he has effected in the basis of our classification. The internal 
organization of Insects is now better known, and this study is no longer 
neglected as was previously the case. He has placed us on the way 
to the Natural System f, and greatly will the public regret that his 
* This preface is the same which stood at the commencement of the third volume 
of the first edition of this work. Having there confined myself to an exposition of 
the general principles, upon which my arrangement of the animals composing the 
Linnfcan class of Insects was effected, and having in the present edition made no 
change in that respect, the same observations are still applicable. Considered, 
however, with regard to the details, or to the secondary and tertiary divisions, that 
is to say, Orders, Families, Genera and Subgenera, this edition will be found to pre- 
sent a remarkable difference. It was impossible to place it on a level with the 
actual state of the science, without modifying several parts of my former system, 
and without considerable additions, which, such has been the progress of Ento- 
mology, are so numerous, that even by filling two volumes instead of one, I have 
been barely enabled to give a very summary view of the multitude of generic divisions 
effectuated within the last ten years, and which are frequently founded on the most 
minute characters. This branch of Zoology has gained much from other and more 
positive sources, those of Anatomy. These observations I was the more impera- 
tively bound to notice, as they formed part of the plan of the illustrious author of 
the “ ll^gne Animal,” and as they serve to confirm the stability of the divisions I 
have established. By a perusal of the general remarks which precede them, the 
reader will be better able to appreciate the motives which have determined these 
changes, and to feel the importance of the addenda that enrich the entomological 
portion of this edition. A simple comparison between it and that of the former 
will show, at a glance, that it has been entirely remoulded, or that it is a new work 
which we now present to the world, rather than a new edition. 
-f- Tableau Element, de I’Hist. Nat. des Aniinaux, and the LC9. d’Anat. Compar. 
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