Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/22

22 , disposés dans un Ordre naturel, published at Brives in the year just mentioned. In order to make the design and merits of this work better understood, it may be desirable to say a few words respecting the state of entomological science when it made its appearance. In the classification of insects, to which alone this work referred, there were several different principles at that time followed by different authors. Such of them as approved of Swammerdam's views, assumed the metamorphoses as the soundest basis of arrangement, and considered these to be the most important characters they afforded. A greater number adopted the opinion of Aristotle and Linnæus, and sought for principles of arrangement in the organs of motion; regarding characters derived from the immature or preparatory states of insects as unsatisfactory and of comparatively little value. Indeed, the arrangement of Linnæus, or the alary system, as it was sometimes called, recommended by its extreme simplicity and an admirable system of nomenclature, had been extensively adopted, and seemed so entirely to occupy the field as to preclude, at least for a time, the success of any rival. Although Fabricius found fault with these arrangements as founded too exclusively on the consideration of one point or one set of organs, he cannot be acquitted of having fallen into a corresponding error, by confining his attention too closely to the structure of the organs of the mouth. Yet the use he made of the diversities found in these parts is