530 EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 



of language in our science is still unsettled, and different 

 terms are used by different writers, there seems full li- 

 berty left to me to select those that appear upon the 

 whole most appropriate ; and where proper and signifi- 

 cant terms seem wanting, to invent new ones. M. La- 

 treille, in a late Essay a , has proposed many changes of 

 this kind, and seems to hesitate concerning the adoption 

 of some of those recently coined in France for the parts 

 of the trunk b ; it may therefore, I think, be permitted 

 me to labour a litde in this hitherto imperfectly cultured 

 field, and to suggest such improvements as the subject 

 may seem to require or admit. 



Linne called the part we are now considering the 

 trunk, its upper-side he usually denominated the thorax, 

 and its under-side the breast : he notices also the scutel- 

 lum and sternum c . As the prothorax and scutellum are 

 the only apparent parts of the back of the trunk in his 

 first Orders (Coleoptera, Hemiptera L.), the rest being 

 covered, in noticing these he puts the part for the whole, 

 calling the prothorax the thorax, but which strictly was 

 not synonymous with what he called by the same name 

 in the other Orders. Linne's phraseology with regard to 

 the trunk of insects was adopted by Fabricius and other 

 Entomologists, till Illiger employed the term thorax to 

 designate the whole of the trunk d , calling the upper part 

 thorax superior and the lower thorax inferior. M. De 

 Blainville, M. Latreille, and other French writers, im- 



;i Organisation Extericure des Insectcs, Mem. du Mus. t. viii. 



b Ibid. 199 — . I have never been able to procure M. Audoin's 

 Memoire on this subject. 



Fundament.. Entomolog. in Amcen. Acad. vii. 143. 



•' Terminologie, 1578, Ike. He afterwards called the trunk Strt/ii- 

 dium: Terminologie dev In&ekten, Magaz. 180G. 14. 



