Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/78

76 received from the commander of the vessel during the voyage, I enjoy the satisfaction of having brought the whole in safety to England ."

The systematic arrangement of this tribe of insects has always been considered a task of great difficulty. So convinced of this was Latreille, who had himself studied the subject profoundly, that he says a classification of lepidoptera may be considered the touchstone of entomologists. This difficulty arises chiefly from the uniformity of organization which prevails throughout the order—a uniformity occasioned by all of them being designed to subsist on liquid food, and to imbibe it in the same manner. The oral organs, therefore, which are of the first importance in classifying other tribes—the coleoptera, for example, in which they undergo almost endless variations of form and consistency to fit them for consuming every kind of organic substance, from semi-fluid animal or vegetable matter to the hardest ligneous tissue—are, in this instance, of comparatively little avail. Recourse must be had to secondary and subordinate characters; and even when we are convinced that, owing to a peculiar facies, and the concurrence of many minute resemblances, certain groups should be regarded as distinct, it is found difficult to define them in a satisfactory manner. Neither has the difficulty been much lessened by the manner in which the subject