548 INVESTIGATION OF INSECTS. 
to a higher wisdom; and indeed it is through these that 
we best descend to the study of species. 
I will suppose you have made yourself master of so 
much of the technical language, particularly the names 
and most important attributes of the principal organs of 
insects, as will suffice for understanding descriptions, or 
knowing these parts when you see them. I will also 
further suppose that what was formerly said on these 
subjects has been sufficiently studied, to enable you with- 
out much difficulty or hesitation to say whether any 
given object belongs to the Class Insecta or Arachnida, 
or to which of their respective Orders?. You are there- 
fore qualified to arrange your collection into its primary 
groups. But you have seen that many others intervene 
between the Order and the genus or species. As the 
genera of Linné are mostly primary groups of Orders, 
perhaps, setting aside such insects included in them by 
him as your eye and their apparent characters convince 
you have no claim to a place there, your next best 
step would be to make yourself thoroughly acquainted 
with them. When you have accurately marshalled 
and intimately studied these groups, you will probably 
have acquired an eye and a tact, experto crede, for group- 
ing without book, and may proceed by analysis to re- 
solve your whole collection, as nearly as possible, into as 
many as nature seems to indicate to you. In doing this 
you will doubtless at first fall into many errors; but these, 
practice and a closer examination will in time enable 
you to rectify. Having thus got your groups as near 
to nature as you can, you may now have recourse to those 
* Vor. III. p. 28—. See above, p. 368—. 
