68 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



[April, 



sub-divisions, and made several new ones of his own, such as the 

 division of Heteromera into Trachelia and' A trachelia ; but broadly he 

 may be considered a tarsalist, and a follower of Latreille and De Gean, 

 and his sub-divisions are so many and complicated, that he is forced 

 to invent fresh designations of divisions, and contrived to- sub-divide 

 to the following extent : order, tribe, sub-tribe, stirps, race, sub-race, 

 family, sub-family, legion, division, genus, and species. 



And as in Westwood classification seemed to acquire its most 

 complicated form, it will be unnecessary to follow its course further 

 in detail, for since his day not only has no entirely new system been 

 proposed, but our ideas as to the very meaning and value of classi- 

 fication have been entirely changed. We need only therefore refer to 

 Kirby, Curtis, and Waterhouse, in England, to the Count de Gean, 

 Boisduval, Lacerdaire, and Meelsant, in France, and to Burmeister, 

 Erichsen, and Redtenbacher, in Germany, as authorities to whom 

 we owe much ; who have discovered new species, formed new genera, 

 inaugurated new families, but who have worked principally on lines 

 already laid down, who have filled up the skeleton maps of others, 

 and to whom we cannot attribute the origin of any new generalization, 

 or the development of any special theory of creation. These have all 

 added their quota to the sum of human knowledge. The Linnean 

 order coleoptera of a century back, with its 30 genera and 900 species, 

 has become avast system, with its intricate and infinite sub-divisions, 

 and its estimated 80,000 diverse forms. But as that century closed, 

 a new era as regards our view of nature dawned, for, as we said before, 

 classification took a new import and a changed value. 



Before the Darwinian theory of natural development startled the 

 scientific world, all men regarded the visible creation, as it were as 

 one plane ; as they beheld it, so it had been in the beginning, and so 

 it ever would be, each form was unaltered and unalterable, species 

 were synchronous, and had been created above time and in one 

 gigantic comprehensive act. Thus it was that to such minds a true 

 classification became as it were a key wherewith to decipher the 

 dark hieroglyphic of nature, and to unfold the secret plan of the 

 Creator. Hence we have M'Leay with his theory of analogous penta- 

 gons, and Westwood with his elaborated affinities. These men seem 

 all groping in the dark, the mystery of life refuses to become plain to 

 their eyes or resolve itself into any appreciable harmony. But for us 

 to-day an CEdipus has arisen, and the riddle of existence in some 

 sort read ; and it seems to us that if we ever find a true natural order 

 it must be a chronological one. Yesterday was not as to-day, nor is 



