1889.] 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



*7 



and how it has been modified and altered by more extended knowledge 

 and wider experience. 



I have chosen the class Insecta, because it appears appropriate to 

 the Society which I have the honour to address, and the order Cole- 

 optera, because that order has had more attention devoted to it by 

 the older entomologists, and is perhaps more homogeneous and more 

 strictly limited than most of the others. Since Entomology was first 

 treated as a serious study, this order has been well defined, its mem- 

 bers have been recognized as all of one household, and have not, as 

 in the case of some of the less specialized insects, been united now 

 with one, now with another, of the fluctuating groups into which 

 various systematists have divided the Insecta. 



With the exception of the loose classification of Geffrey, the 

 bounds of this order have only been relaxed, or the patronymic of 

 any of its groups disputed, so far as I am aware, in the case of For- 

 ficula (or the Earwigs) not unnaturally classed by some of the earlier 

 systematists as connected with the Brachelytra, and more recently 

 in the case of Strepsiptem, which I believe are now generally admit- 

 ted as aberrant members of the order. 



Within the limits of the group, however, many changes have taken 

 place, and it is to a short summary of these that I propose to draw 

 your attention. 



Among the ancients the study of nature held no very high place, 

 and in an age when art rose to an eminence to which we now vainly 

 strive to attain, we are only able to discover the first faint glimmer- 

 ings of any desire to penetrate the arcana of natural phenomena. 

 Philosophy was indeed so subordinated to metaphysics, that truth 

 was lost in theory. Such philosophers as Democritus and Lucretius 

 had their tenable hypothesis of the visible creation, but the simple 

 unbiassed investigation of nature was neglected or utilized merely to 

 prop up some kosmic theory of the universe. Among all the great 

 minds of Greek civilization, Aristotle is the only name which we can 

 call in any sense that of a naturalist, and to the great Stagirite the 

 world owes not only its first knowledge of natural phenomena, but 

 the very foundation of the inductive sciences. 



But Aristotle's claim to be considered as a systematist is a small 

 one. Many people regard him as such, but although he distinguished 

 between different kinds and groups, indeed giving to the very order 

 we are now considering the distinctive name which it bears to-day, 

 yet he seemed to recognize no ordered sequence in their differentiation, 

 'and his works on animals consist chiefly of a mass of heterogenous 



