10 INTRODUCTION. 



those I have just considered, might be made use of to 

 prove how erroneous is the idea of assuming any particu- 

 lar organ as the sole source of the Essential Character* : 

 but I trust the above will be sufficient. Natural History 

 is the science of comparison ; — to trace affinities, to 

 weigh distinctions, and to compare characters, are the 

 three principles upon which the whole knowledge of a na- 

 turalist hinges ; and so true is this position, that the earliest 

 authors who have made Nature the object of their study 

 have been obliged to use a classification rude indeed, 

 as might have been expected, but not the less satisfac- 

 torily proving that Natural History is of all the branches 

 of human knowledge, that which the most requires the 

 arrangement of our ideas. The very naturalists — such as 

 Buffon, Reaumur, and Bonnet — who despised scientific 

 nomenclature, were obliged to attend to classification ; and 

 the reason was evident. Nomenclature, it must always be 

 understood, is artificial ; and once that a natural group 

 was indicated, it mattered little whether this group had 

 a name, unless it was for the purpose of assisting the me- 

 mory 1 ' and connecting the chain of reasoning. Entomolo- 

 gists therefore, who never studied Nature in books, but 



a It is not to the Essential Character itself, as defined by Fabricius, 

 (Phil. Ent. p. 96,) that I object; but to the impossibility of finding such. 

 " Character essentialis optimus facillimus at vix possibilis." Why then 

 trouble ourselves with hunting after a cbimasra ? 



b The almost exclusive attention which has of late years been unfortu- 

 nately lavished on Nomenclature and Systematic Arrangement — on the means 

 in short, and not on the end of the science — has with ignorant persons dimi- 

 nished the importance of the study of Natural History itself. Let us hope 

 that the slur will be soon entirely obliterated by those naturalists who have 

 already shown that they are not to be deterred from the investigation of 

 affinities by great names, because, forsooth, these may have preceded them 

 in the annals of science. 



