

PREFACE(l). 



Overwhelmed with scientific laboui'S, 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 assurance of his high esteem. It was even 

 by various interesting observations on several of these ani- 



(1) 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 ex- 

 position of the general principles, upon which my arrang-ement of the animals 

 composing the Linnsan 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 saj'. Orders, Families, Genera and Subgenera, this edition will 

 be found to present 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 pro- 

 gress of Entomology, 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 moi'e imperatively bound to notice, as they formed part of the plan of the 

 illustriousauthor of the "llegne Animal," and as they serve to confirm the stability 

 of the divisions I have established. By a perusal of tlie 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. 



