plain and universally intelligible groups, which we term beasts, birds, fishes, and insects. It seems to me highly improbable that a Creator, who has, with such unerring wisdom, adapted means to their destined ends, should have performed any part of the mighty work of creation without a fixed and perfect design. If we consider that no muscle, tendon, or vein, however minute, whether in man, the highest, or in those animals which may be reckoned the lowest grade among created beings, but has functions appointed for it regularly to perform, and that no single portion of our frame can be parted with, without occasioning us inconvenience, it seems fair to infer, that no single atom, or no one created thing, exists without filling some appointed place in a great and perfectly organized and arranged whole; however far that whole may, and must be, above our limited understandings. To doubt the existence of a natural system appears to me to be precisely equivalent to doubting a creation; for one cannot conceive the various tribes of animals to have received their being at the hands of an Omnipotent Creator, and yet to be indebted, at the same time, to chance for those gradual shades of difference from each other, which are found so harmoniously blending group into group, that the practised naturalist may follow up the same peculiarity of habit or structure, however varied in its development, from one to the other of the most opposite beings which you can place before him. Infinitely varied, however, as the course of such a peculiarity must be, the naturalist never finds those sudden departures from the regular flow of variation, which all systems, even the most approved, are constantly exhibiting; the reason of which is, that, in thus tracing approaches in his mind, he will continually discover an individual completely surrounded by others, each of which partakes of its peculiarities, not only in a different degree, but in a different mode; and thus he will perceive the character on which his attention has been fixed, ramifying in all directions. Now no system, hitherto suggested, will at all cope with this; it has been the plan, and I imagine the fault of all our systems, that they are so constructed as to be incapable of receiving a character from, or imparting it to, more than a single individual: hence they never can possess capacity sufficient to exhibit those endless chains of relation which the mind so luxuriates in tracing. The want of such a system has been, I believe, universally acknowledged, and should my humble endeavour even prepare the way for its establishment, and act the mere part of a herald to proclaim its approach, I shall not only be satisfied, but delighted.

I cannot here plough my toilsome track through the wild waste of systems and speculations, which have embarrassed, rather than assisted, natural history during the last hundred years; my aim will be more to make myself understood than comment on the merits of others, except as I can lay them under contribution to enhance my own.

Previously to the publication of Mr. MacLeay's Horæ Entomologicæ, it appears to have been an opinion universally prevalent, that there existed in nature a regularly graduated scale of beings, beginning with man as the most perfect, and terminating in the least perfect creature known to possess life. One ingenious author had varied a little from this theory by allowing a double series to nature's works, which commencing on a level with the most perfect animal and most perfect plant, descended gradually and approached as they descended, until they met in those jelly-like substances which seem yet to hover between the two kingdoms, puzzling naturalists by their proximity to both—the system thus assuming the shape of the letter V.[3]

However convenient for the formation of a catalogue, or the arrangement of a cabinet, such a system may be; and however inconvenient or impracticable any other conceivable plan may appear, I think few will concur in imagining man capable of, or warranted in, thus setting up limits and boundary-marks to the works and power of his Maker; for the next step, as a matter of course, would be the application of similar restrictions to infinite space, which he might as reasonably expect to bring under his sapient admeasurement.

Our country has the credit of having first sapped the foundation of a building, which, though by its founder[4] termed a commodious and well covered house, could not retain religion or reason among its inmates; indeed, the illustrious Swede was himself the first to see and to know that his mansion, however commodious, was built but on the sand; but knowing its imperfections, he cared not to alter them: he thought it enough to acknowledge without striving to amend them; in fact, he really seems to have considered the natural system, like the philosopher's stone, a mere ens imaginationis, the pursuit of which would be but a waste of time: he doubted not its existence, but he doubted man's ability to discover it.

Such was natural history when Mr. MacLeay's immortal work first diffused its splendour over the world. The power of thought, the profound research which he there exhibited, and the confession that "he was one of those who preferred an imperfect transitory glimpse of nature pure and unveiled, to a full view of the most commodious and ostentatious mantle that could be employed to conceal her features from the gaze,"[5] were such novelties in the science, that men scarcely credited their understandings: they began thinking, and have continued to think until the term naturalist is not, as it was but a short time back, immeasurably separated from that of philosopher. The extraordinary merit of the Horæ Entomologicæ consists, not merely in disclosing and elucidating the invaluable fact, that a series of affinities, naturally arranged, has a constant tendency to describe a circle which eventually returns into itself: a still more important feature of the work is, that unceasing and determined endeavour evinced by its learned author to seek after, weigh, and examine facts, and to employ these alone in the support of his theories,—an endeavour indicative of that only true spirit of philosophy which has and can have no other end in view than the establishment of truth.

That I suppose Mr. MacLeay to have mistaken the number which nature has adopted in the combination and distribution of her various tribes—that I totally dissent from his idea of analogies and affinities, and from his division or rather adoption of Clairville's division of insects into mandibulate and haustellate, will be sufficiently evident from the contents of this little Essay; but in these and all other instances, in which I feel myself bound to disclose any difference of opinion which may tend to reveal or establish truth, I hope I shall always be found urging my objections with the deference due to an author from whose works I have extracted many important facts, and the still more important discovery which forms the ground-work of my own theory.

That nature has a decided tendency to the formation of circles, I cannot for one moment doubt. If there be yet doubters on that subject,—if there be yet those who deem the discovery of Mr. MacLeay a mere invention of his own, let them consider the plan of the universe, as established by the celebrated Newton,—let them behold the glorious sun, a circular centre of light and life; let them observe the circular attendant worlds, which revolve in circles about him, and