NATURAL SYSTEMS. MACLEAY's. 219 



sal, or he would not have abandoned this principle of 

 the natural system in the two most important diagrams 

 of his essay ; being those, in fact, by which he intended 

 to show the natural distribution of the Annulosa, and 

 the sum and substance of his entire theory on this class 

 of animals. 



(269.) A few other systems, claiming to be natural, 

 may be briefly glanced at, as having been intimated or 

 projected by subsequent writers, without, however, ex- 

 hibiting any attempt at demonstration, much less of 

 establishing any new principle of natural arrangement. 

 The laborious author of the " Systematic Catalogue of 

 British Insects," — adopting a favourite notion of an emi- 

 nent entomologist whose writings we have frequently 

 quoted, — thinks that seven is the definite number em- 

 ployed by nature in the construction of her groups, and 

 therefore divides all insects into seven orders ; profess- 

 ing at the same time to be " convinced that natural 

 objects cannot be arranged agreeably to their affinities, 

 otherwise than by a series of circles, returning, as Mr. 

 MacLeay expresses it, into themselves." Admitting this 

 as an undoubted truth, our author, nevertheless, continues 

 " sceptical as to the quinary arrangement being uni- 

 versal throughout nature." In pursuance of his be- 

 lief in the circular system, he has given a table 

 of the supposed affinities of the order Coleoptera, 

 and three others of different groups of the Lepidop~ 

 tera. As no details, however, are enteied into, the 

 reader is left to make out these affinities as he best 

 can, and the tables themselves (possibly by the mode 

 in which they are printed) appear to us not well cal- 

 culated to elucidate the notions of the author. A 

 much more able attempt to revive this system has 

 been recently made by the ingenious author of Sphinx 

 Vespifonnig, wherein he advocates the circular theory 

 of Mr. MacLeay, but maintains that the number of divi- 

 sions throughout nature are seven. These divisions he 

 arranges, so that one, the assumed pre-eminent type, 

 occupies the centre of a diagram ; the other six being 



