4.99 HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
he has referred to them incidentally, it is generally with 
this latter view. 
If we turn from the word and people of Gop to the 
Lovers of wisdom (as they modestly styled themselves) of 
the heathen world, and their writings; we shall discern 
amongst them a great light shining, the beams of which 
illuminate even our own times. In the illustrious Stagy- 
rite we recognize—“ The father of philosophy, at least 
of our philosophy, who, rising superior to the darkness 
in which he lived, darted his penetrating glance through 
all nature, and established principles which a long course 
of ages of inquiry have but confirmed. With Aristotle 
begins the real History of science: and how much so- 
ever he may have erred upon particular points, the great- 
ness of his conceptions and the justness of his ideas, on 
the whole entitle him to our high veneration. His la- 
bours in the investigation of the Animal Kingdom have 
laid the foundation of the knowledge we now possess?.” 
This language of the learned President of the Linnean 
Society is particularly applicable to what this great and 
original genius has effected in Entomology. We have 
seen upon a former occasion>, that Linné himself had 
not those precise ideas of the limits of the Class Insecta, 
which Aristotle so many centuries before him had 
adopted. In stating the obligations of Entomology to 
this true scavant, I shall begin by laying before you a- 
tabular view of what may be called his system, as far as 
I have been able to collect it from his works, especially 
his History of Animals. 
a Lann. Trans. i. 5. Vox. LER pa Ge 
