APPENDIX 



TO 



THE ZOOLOGIST 



For 185/3 



Art. XXIX. — Proposed Division of Neuroptera into two Classes. 

 By Edward Newman. 



Characters are assigned to groups in Natural History, for the 

 purpose of distinguishing them from other groups. To accomplish 

 this end, characters should apply to all the component parts of the 

 groups which they are intended to distinguish, and should not apply 

 to the component parts of any cognate group which they are not in- 

 tended to distinguish. It is, however, no proof that a group is unna- 

 tural, because the characters which naturalists have assigned to it are 

 insufficient ; for the uninstructed mind acknowledges Nature's group- 

 ing, without the aid of science : an infant will distinguish a bird or a 

 fish, without knowing the characters which separate both from a mam- 

 mal ; and however the man of science may blunder in defining those 

 characters, however unsatisfactory to himself and to others may be his 

 definitions, still a bird and a fish will ever be recognized as things 

 distinct and separate from each other and from mammals. Nothing 

 is more certain than that Nature has distinguished such groups : no- 

 thing is more probable than that man should fail in defining them. 

 In Entomology, we have hit on distinguishing characters for most of 

 the classes; but that which is now universally known by the name 

 Neuroptera, and, by a few entomologists, by my proposed name of 

 Anisomorpha, has defied all attempts at definition, except such vague 

 and negative definition as depends on variation or absence of charac- 

 ter. Moreover, the mind does not recognize Neuroptera as one of 

 Nature's divisions. All our systematists have felt this deficiency, this 

 difficulty; but instead of carefully revising the entire group, and 

 X* APPENDIX. A A 



