52 
ON THE CETONIIDiE OF SOUTH AFKICA. 
groupe in which species combine will be found, provided all the species are known, to return 
into itself, so as to form, as it were, a circle ; and if we could suppose no species to be lost or to 
remain undiscovered, we should further find five of these lowest groupes to form another circle, and 
five of these last circular groupes to form another, and so on until we arrived at that grand 
circular groupe which is called the Animal Kingdom. But setting aside this theoretical use of 
the foregoing analysis, the practical entomologist will soon discover that in no other way have 
we ever had the singularly complicated relations, that exist between the different species of the 
natural family of Cetoniidce, so well represented. It must not be supposed, however, that I 
offer tills essay as perfect and complete, or that I absurdly pretend, as some have most unjustly 
laid to my charge, to have positively arrived at the Natural System. I merely publish this 
paper on Cetoniida, as another, and perhaps closer approximation to that Divine plan, which, 
every hour I have devoted to nature, whether in tropical forests or in the museums of Europe, has 
shewn to be the branch of natural history most worthy of being studied by rational beings. 
But the truth is, that this Divine plan is not one particular branch of natural history, but the 
study of it necessarily includes the knowledge of every branch. It is the whole, of which each 
branch of natural history is but a part, and which I shall ever regard with gratitude, as having 
been the source of many moments of the purest pleasure while my residence was in an 
unhealthy climate. 
