THE SYNTHETICAL METHOD. 469 



commend or derogate from those other studies ; 1 should 

 betray my own ignorance and weakness should I do so ; 

 I only wish that they might not altogether jostle out and 

 exclude this. I wish that this might be brought in fashion 

 among us; I wish men would be so equal and civil as not 

 to disparage, deride, and vilify, those studies which them- 

 selves skill not of, or are not conversant in." In this re- 

 spect perhaps no branch of science has had so much right 

 to complain as Entomology ; it has, within the recollection 

 of many, been spurned as useless, condemned as trifling, 

 and laughed at as foolish. Yet, as if to demonstrate the 

 excessive absurdity and wickedness of judging any thing 

 organized by the hands of Omnipotence to be unworthy 

 of human notice, it so happens that of all branches of na- 

 tural history, without exception this is the one in which 

 we can best study that interesting scheme by which our 

 own structure, as well as that of every other terrestrial be- 

 ing, has been regulated. This may seem a sweeping pro- 

 position ; but the almost infinite number of species con- 

 tained in the group of Annulosa, of which certainly more 

 than a hundred thousand now exist in collections — the 

 consequently easy gradation of affinity from one form to 

 another, will always, in preference to any other branch of 

 natural history, render this the field for investigating the 

 nature of those general rules which may have governed the 

 distribution of the universe. They may without doubt 

 be also detected in other branches of Natural History, but 

 no where so easily as in this ; since the chasms are here 

 not only narrower, but less frequent. In contemplating 

 the otherwise unaccountable profusion of Annulose spe^n 

 cies, their diversity of manners, structure, and ornament, 

 we almost fancy with Ray, that it was in order to teach ua 



