466 GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON 



no better proof of it, than what is to be found in the first 

 Essay, and I therefore am unwilling at present to speculate 

 on the assumption of its entire accuracy. 



I may state however my belief, that future investigation 

 will produce a table expressing the affinity of the Stirpes 

 t)f Coleoptera, exactly on the same plan as those we have 

 already seen. For if the groups of Iuliform larvae be di_ 

 rectly divisible into families such as those into which the 

 Petalocera were resolved in the first Essay, then the uni- 

 formity hitherto so observable in the distribution of the 

 animal kingdom no longer holds good, or at least the diffi- 

 culty of reconciling such an hypothesis with this unifor- 

 mity seems at present to me to be insurmountable. But 

 the strongest argument in favour of my opinion, that there 

 is an intermediate class of groups between those w 7 hich in 

 the last chapter I termed tribes, and those which in the 

 first Essay were called families, is, that every Entomologist 

 has acknowledged that the Linnaean genera Scarabaus, 

 Curculio, Cerambyx, &c. are natural groups ; and these 

 would evidently be lost, did we proceed at once to divide 

 the Chilognathiform larvae into families, such as the Melo- 

 lonthidce, Rutelidce, &c. 



This intermediate class of groups may, as before stated,, 

 perhaps be named STIRPES ; and had they been properly 

 determined, our next object would probably have been to 

 resolve them into FAMILIES, unless indeed we can sup- 

 pose that there exists still another intermediate class of 

 groups. Here, however, unusual difficulties present them- 

 selves ; for the Lamellicornes of Latreille appear to be de- 

 composable into two distinct divisions of two circles each, 

 which seems irreconcileable with what we have seen, unless 

 we can imagine the Rectocera and Petalocera to be Stir- 



