79 
plant; and considering* that there may be 100,000 species of such plants in the 
world, the number of insects would amount to 600,000. 
In the Royal Entomological Cabinet at Berlin, there are 28,000 species of 
Beetles ; and from the presumed superiority in point of extent of the coleopterous 
order, Burmeister assumes that the actually known amount of insect species, and 
their relative proportions of number, in the different orders, may thus be distri¬ 
buted in round figures :— 
Coleoptera . 36,000 
Lepidoptera . 12,000 
Hymenoptera .12,000 
Diptera. 10,000 
Hemiptera. 4,000 
Varia........ 4,000 
78,000 
Stephens, with his usual accuracy, establishes the following numbers of each 
of the Orders, as regards British species of insects : they must, however, be con¬ 
siderably increased by the addition of many minute Hymenoptera and Diptera , 
noticed since the publication of his Catalogue :— 
Coleoptera .. 3,300 
Lepidoptera. 1,838 
Hymenoptera. 2,054 
Diptera . 1,671 
Hemiptera . 605 
Varia . 544 
British species . 10,012 
By a parity of reasoning on this distribution, it is manifest that the numerical 
strength of the orders is comparatively far greater than Burmeister calculates: 
we need only illustrate the two first, to arrive at a similar conclusion with regard 
to the others. Stephens makes the Coleoptera not quite twice the number of the 
Lepidoptera , while Burmeister makes the Coleoptera three times more numerous 
than the Lepidoptera . 
That good Christian and excellent naturalist, John Ray, (to whose memory 
the equally great Cuvier paid a tribute when he styled him “ le premier veritable 
naturaliste pour le regne animal”), says, in his Wisdom of God ,—with great cau¬ 
tion, however, not to overstep the bounds of truth or the modesty of conjecture— 
6 4 supposing, then, there he a thousand several sorts of insects in this island and 
the sea near it, if the same proportion holds between the insects, natives of Eng¬ 
land and those of the rest of the world, as doth between plants, domestic and exo¬ 
tic, (that is, I guess, decuple), the species of insects on the whole earth—land and 
