SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 367 
iv. Next to Classes and Subclasses we are to consider 
those groups of insects that are denominated Orders. 
The characters of these at first were taken principally 
from the instruments of flight or the absence of them ; 
and the name appropriated to each Order by Linné, after 
Aristotle, had reference to this circumstance. But this 
alone does not afford characters sufficiently discrimina- 
ting: for though to an accurate observer a difference in 
these organs appears to be characteristic of most of the 
Orders, yet in some it is not easily detected or defined. 
In the Neuroptera there are as many different types of 
wings as there are of tribes or suborders. . So that it 
seems not possible so to construct the definition of every 
Order, as to take its character from the organs of flight 
alone. Linné was sensible of this, and was compelled 
to have recourse to subsidiary characters in the majority 
of his: his observation therefore with regard to Genera, 
—that the character does not give the genus, but the 
genus the character?, 
characters included in the definition of an Order, should 
be the result of a careful examination of its component 
applies equally to Orders ; and the 
groups. 
On a former occasion I named to you the Orders into 
which it appeared to me the Class Insecta might be di- 
vided®: they were these. Coleoptera; Strepsiptera ; 
Dermaptera; Orthoptera; Hemiptera; Trichoptera; 
Lepidoptera ; Neuroptera ; Hymenoptera; Diptera ; 
Aphaniptera; Aptera. I then briefly explained them 
4 Scias Characterem “non constituere Genus, sed Genus Charac- 
terem ; Characterem fluere e Genere, non Genus e Charactere ; Cha- 
racterem nonesse ut Genus fiat, sed ut Genus noscatur. Philos. 
Botan. n. 169. >. Vor. T, p. 66, note’. 
