360 ON THE ORDERS 



have since manifested. MM. Lamarck and Dumeril, 

 together with the author of the Entomologie Helvetique, 

 have also been sensible of the necessity of dividing the 

 Winged insects into two classes, distinguished from each 

 other by their manner of feeding. In some countries in- 

 deed entomologists have rejected this distribution, at first 

 because it was not to be found in the Systema Naturae, 

 then because it was not well explained in the Entomologia 

 Systematica, and lastly, because it is in plain terms con- 

 tradicted in the Genera Insect orum and Regne Animal. 

 It is strange that, with this respect for authorities, they 

 should have paid so little deference to the book of nature. 

 They deem it sufficient that in the Regne Animal M. La- 

 treille should have founded his general arrangement on the 

 texture of the wings. He has there indeed expressed him- 

 self as attaching more importance to the aerial organs 

 of locomotion and to the texture of the body, than to the 

 modifications undergone by those other organs upon which 

 the very existence of the individual depends. " Ainsi," 

 says Lamarck, " les caracthes si important de la bouche 

 ne furent nullement considtrts, et cederent leur preemi~ 

 nence aux organes si variables de la locomotion dans Vair" 

 The propriety, however, of this system is certainly not 

 perceptible in its results, as exhibited in a series where 

 we have Scutellera next to Tetrix, Libellula following 

 Coccus, and Melipona immediately preceding Papilio. 

 Considering that M. Lamarck had already stated the great 

 fault of the system of Linnaeus, as it regarded the Winged 

 insects, to be the confusion of the Insectes Broyeurs with 

 the Insectes Suceurs, such a series is the more extraordi- 

 nary. It would nevertheless be the height of injustice 

 not to acknowledge that Latreille had good reasons for 



