26 THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



In reviewing the value of the work of Linnaeus, what we must 

 specially bear in mind and insist upon, is this difference between a 

 true natural order which he undoubtedly failed to apprehend, and that 

 orderly system of arranging facts, without which all knowledge would 

 be useless if not impossible, we must remember, too, while recogniz- 

 ing the fallacies into which he fell, not only that the task he set him- 

 self to perform was almost superhuman, but that he too was the child 

 of his age, and that was the especial age of artificiality : nature was 

 everywhere subordinated to art, the poetry, the painting, the archi- 

 tecture, even the gardens of that time manifest its indifference to 

 what we now regard as the higher inspirations of genius, its bond- 

 age to method and approved conventionality; and in an age when the 

 English Pope was considered the most illustrious of poets, the 

 Swedish Linne might well be held the first of naturalists. 



But Linnaeus although he erred greatly from a truly natural order, 

 cleared a path by his labours in which others followed in ever increas- 

 ing numbers, and after him the first author who merits our attention 

 is a doctor of Paris, one Etione Louis Geffrey. It was three years 

 before the final issue of the Systema Naturae, (that was in 1764), that 

 Geffrey published his " Histoire des Insectes." In this work he 

 proposes a classification on rather new lines, but no improvement at 

 all on his predecessors, for he unites with Coleoptera both what we 

 call now Dermaptera or Euplexoptera that is the Earwigs, and also 

 the greater part of the Hemiptera ; but in subdividing his orders he 

 discards the Linnean divisions according to antennae and substitutes 

 what is known as the tarsal system. He groups all the insects be 

 included in Coleoptera into three main divisions : — 



1. Hard entire Elytra : includes nearly all the Coleoptera except 



Brachelytra and perhaps Malacoderma. 



2. Hard shortened Elytra : Brachelytra and Forficula. 



3. Soft Elytra : Hemiptera and perhaps some Malacoderma, 



Meloe, &c. 



Each of these groups Geffrey divided into four or fewer, lower 

 grades, according to number of tarsal joints, thus we get Pentamera y 

 Heteriomera, and Trimera. Of course, he overlooked the fact since 

 discovered by M'Leay that the Tetramera and Trimera are only ap- 

 parently so. This tarsal system although really not more natural 

 than an antennal one has been found very convenient, it charac- 

 terized all the early schools of French entomologists, was adopted and 

 extended by the great Latreille and since his day has been used more 

 or less by all authorities down to quite recent times. 



