EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 351 



dering the almost insuperable difficulties which, from the 

 minuteness of the objects, oppose themselves to the skill 

 and instruments of the entomological anatomist, we can 

 scarcely hope that it will ever attain to that certainty and 

 perfection to which, as far as the larger animals are con- 

 cerned, anatomy has arrived. Yet infinitely more has 

 been accomplished than might have been expected, and 

 new accessions of light are daily thrown upon it. When 



mal forms, he refers to the local circumstances, wants, and habits of 

 individual animals themselves ; these he regards as the modifiers of 

 their organization and structure (102). To show the absurd nonplus 

 to which this his favourite theory has reduced him, it will only be ne- 

 cessary to mention the individual instances which in different works 

 he adduces to exemplify it. In his Systeme, he supposes that the 

 web-footed birds {Anseres) acquired their natatory feet by frequently 

 separating their toes as far as possible from each other in their efforts 

 to swim. Thus the skin that unites these toes at their base con- 

 tracted a habit of stretching itself; and thus in time the web-foot of 

 the duck and the goose were produced. The waders {Grallce), 

 which, in order to procure their food, must stand in the water, but 

 do not love to swim, from their constant efforts to keep their bodies 

 from submersion, were in the habit of always stretching their legs 

 with this view, till they grew long enough to save them the trou- 

 ble ! ! ! (13 — ). How the poor birds escaped drowning before they 

 had got their web feet and long legs, the author does not inform us. 

 In another work, which I have not now by me, I recollect he attri- 

 butes the long neck of the camelopard to its efforts to reach the 

 boughs of the mimosa, which, after the lapse of a few thousand years, 

 it at length accomplished ! ! ! In his last work, he selects as an ex- 

 ample one of the Molluscce, which, as it moved along, felt an incli- 

 nation to explore by means of touch the bodies in its path : for this 

 purpose it caused the nervous and other fluids to move in masses 

 successively to certain points of its head, and thus in process of 

 time it acquired its horns or tentacula ! ! Aram, sans Vertebr. i. 188. 

 It is grievous that this eminent zoologist, who in other respects 

 stands at the head of his science, should patronize notions so con- 

 fessedly absurd and childish. 



