Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/180

 described those with which they were acquainted. This conviction was quickly impressed upon the mind with regard to the smaller species of animals, because upon this point their ignorance was the greatest, and the application of the notions which they had acquired to the knowledge of the moderns the most difficult and perplexing.

With regard to insects in particular, it was easy to see that the ancients had treated of only a veiy small number, and that with great inaccuracy; their works on this class of animals consequently ceased to occupy attention, which was exclusively devoted to the study of nature, and the science soon advanced rapidly.

However, the names that the ancients had imposed upon some classes of insects easily recognised remained, having parsed from the ancient languages into the vernacular tongues. The more obscure names, the signification of which was doubtful or unknown, were employed by the modern naturalists for the numerous genera which the progress of science rendered it necessary to establish. Naturalists did not resolve to invent new names until all those employed by the ancients in the classes which they were studying were exhausted; and even then all, excepting M. Adanson, composed the new names from Greek or Latin roots. But even when naturalists gave names employed by the ancients to the genera of insects which they had formed, it was generally without any idea of applying them to the species which they had been employed by the ancients to designate, and without any attempt to aid in the recognition of those species. That a name had been used by some ancient author to designate an insect of some kind, or that there was no certain proof of the contrary, has been deemed a sufficient reason by modern entomologists for the application of an ancient name to a new genus. Our entomological systems contain names employed by the ancients, the signification of which is so entirely lost that it is matter of doubt whether they belonged to an animal or a plant.

It is necessary for the object that I have in view to illustrate this by an example, which is far from being the only one which I could produce.

M. Camus, the translator into French of Aristotle's Natural History of Animals, remarks with reason in his notes, that commentators are divided with regard to the signification of the word Staphylinus, employed by that philosopher. Some have considered it as the name of an insect, others as that of a plant; but, says Camus, on the authority of the "Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle de Valmont de Bomare," in which he found the word Staphylinus, "The Staphylinus is an insect well known to naturalists, because it has preserved its name as well in the Latin as in the French." From these words we learn that Camus