42 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



authority of his letters, was before his death sensible of his 

 great error in this respect; but Bonnet, with singular 

 inconsistency, constantly maintained the inutility of system, 

 even on an occasion when, from his ignorance of it. Sir 

 James Smith, speaking of his experiments on the barberry, 

 found it quite impossible to make him comprehend what 

 plant he referred to.^ 



So great is the importance of a systematic arrangement 

 of insects. Yet no such arrangement has hitherto been 

 completed. Various fragments towards it, indeed, exist. 

 But the work itself is in the state of a dictionary wanting 

 a considerable proportion of the words of the language it 

 professes to explain ; and placing those which it does 

 contain in an order often so arbitrary and defective, that 

 it is difficult to discover even the page containing the word 

 you are in search of. Can it be denied, then, that they 

 are most meritoriously employed who devote themselves to 

 the removal of these defects — to the perfecting of the 

 system — and to clearing the path of future economical or 

 physiological observers from the obstructions which now 

 beset it ? And who that knows the vast extent of the 

 science, and how impossible it is that a divided attention 

 can embrace the whole, will contend that it is not de- 

 sirable that some labourers in the field of literature should 

 devote themselves entirely and exclusively to this object? 

 Who that is aware of the importance of the comprehensive 

 views of a Fabricius, an Illiger, or a Latreille, and the infinite 

 saving of time of which their inquiries will be productive to 

 their followers, will dispute their claim to rank amongst the 

 most honourable in science ? 



II. No objection, I think, now remains against addicting 

 ourselves to entomological pursuits, but that which seems to 

 have the most weight with you, and which indeed is cal- 

 culated to make the deepest impression upon the best minds 

 — I mean the charge of inhumanity and cruelty. That the 

 science of Entomology cannot be properly cultivated without 



^ Tour on the Continent, 'in. 150. 



