20 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



motionless. The Diptera and some of the Hymenoptera form this 

 division. 



You observe that the formation of such a classification as this 

 implies considerable study of insects in all their stages. Swam- 

 merdam describes rather less than 250 species of beetles, but they are 

 difficult to identify, and, on account of the paucity of his materials, he 

 was unable to undertake anything like a systematic classification of 

 them. Swammerdam died in 1685, and in 1710, 50 years after the 

 appearance of that naturalist's great work, there was published by the 

 Royal Society of London, shortly after the death of its famous author, 

 Ray's " Historia Insectorum." John Ray is really our first system- 

 atise As voluminous almost as Swammerdam, he took in a wider 

 sphere, and his work on insects was almost the last labour of a life 

 devoted to the study of all natural phenomena. The son of an Essex 

 blacksmith, the obvious bent of his mind, induced his father to send 

 him to Cambridge, he became a Fellow of Trinity, took orders, 

 although he never had a cure, and became the first naturalist of 

 Europe. To his works on plants, birds, &c, we will not refer, but 

 direct our attention briefly to his classification of insects, in which he 

 was aided by the learned Willoughby. Coleoptera are considered in 

 this system to rank equivalent to Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, and 

 Diptera all combined. 



Ray says of the special order we are considering, viz., Coleoptera, 

 that it can be classified in three different ways. By general appear- 

 ance, or as he puts it, for his work like most scientific treatises of that 

 period is in Latin " Commune respectu " ; secondly by their Antennae 

 or, thirdly, as he rather vaguely says according to their movements." 



He specifically describes about 100 species, more than half of 

 which seem to be Lamellicornes. Cicendela figures as the glow-worm, 

 which indeed was the insect originally called by that name, its trans- 

 ference to the tiger beetle being due to Linnaeus, there are very few 

 Geodephaga and only one Brachelytra described, but like Swammer- 

 dam before him, he was able to study too few forms to make any 

 lasting classification of the Coleoptera. 



But two years after the death of Ray, in 1707, there was born in 

 the village of Rashult, in Sweden, a child whose life-work originated 

 a new era in natural science. I refer to Karl Linne, or as we call 

 him Linnaeus. The great Professor of Upsala displayed when a boy 

 few signs of the mental power he afterwards developed ; he travelled 

 a great deal in Sweden, Finland, and all over Europe, and settled for 

 a long time in Holland before he received a British knighthood and 



