1889.] 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



27 



About the same time (1766), a Thurengian, Jacob Schaffer, gave to 

 the world his work " Icones insectorum circa Ratisbonam indigenorum 

 coloribus naturam referentibus expressae," a fairly long title even for 

 an entomological work in those days. Schaffer's system was de- 

 cidedly original, he only allows three orders : 4-winged, 2-winged, and 

 no- winged. Coleoptera are grouped into two sections : long elytra 

 and short elytra, which is at any rate simple to remember. You per- 

 ceive he used the elytra as Geffrey did to divide the order, and also 

 adhered to that author's tarsal system in his sub-divisions. We 

 may remember Schaffer from the genus Telephorus, which he first 

 proposed ; but his work impressed no lasting mark on the general 

 development of science, and both he and his insects of Ratisbon have 

 long since been swept into the limbo of forgetfulness. 



Another name which demands our attention is that of Carl de 

 Geer, a fellow countryman of Linnaeus. De Geer was a member of 

 the upper classes, and devoted a considerable fortune to the pursuits 

 of Entomology. He published during his lifetime about twenty 

 volumes on his favourite study, the principal of which was his 

 " Memoires pour servir a l'histoire des insectis," which was finally 

 concluded in 1778, the year of his death and you will observe twelve 

 years after the final issue of the " Systema Naturae," De Geer's chief 

 claim to remembrance lies in the fact that he finally cleared up the 

 confusion which had been brought about by Geffrey, between Cole- 

 optera and some of the other orders, and selected the true position of 

 Forficula as not Coleopterous ; but he did not do much to advance the 

 general classification of the order, and appears to have followed the 

 antennal system of Linnaeus, rather than the tarsal one of his French 

 contemporary. 



This brings us to the closing years of the eighteenth century, and 

 we find the intellectual life of Europe assuming a wider horizon, and 

 natural science finding many exponents in many lands. 



Clairville, a Swiss, struck out a path for himself. His " Ento- 

 mologie Helvetique" was published in Zurich, in 1798. He was the 

 first to give that prominence to the mouth organs, which has been so 

 generally relied on since, as affording a basis for a really natural sys- 

 ! tern, and divided all insects into Mandibulata, or such as are pos- 

 sessed of biting mouth organs ; and Haustellata, or those which have 

 sucking or tubular mouths. This classification has, as you know, 

 been adopted by the earlier English systematists, such as Stephens 

 . and Westwood. Clairville, nothing if not original, discarded all the 

 Linnean names of orders including the venerable Aristotlean Cole- 



