Copy 2

On the history and natural arrangement of insects / By William Swainson and W.E. Shuckard.

  • William Swainson
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the history and natural arrangement of insects / By William Swainson and W.E. Shuckard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/420 page 4
    perfect of all vertebrate animals. The metamorphosis of insects, however, has been invested with so much im- portance by some writers, that we shall hereafter return to it more fully, when treating of those divisions in which it is most strikingly developed. (5.) The rank of the Annulosa, in the great circle of the animal creation, has more than once been ad- verted to in our former volumes: they are inferior only to the vertebrate animals in being, as a whole, less highly organised, or rather by having a less com- plicated structure. These distinctions, on the other hand, place them far above the three other great di- visions of animals, namely, the Testacea, the Radiata, and the Acrita. Their superiority over these is so self- evident, that it seems impossible to conceive how any naturalist who takes nature for his guide, could think of placing the headless and almost inanimate oyster higher in the scale of creation than the bee and the ant, be- cause the former happens to have a heart, while the ‘latter have none. This outrage upon natural clas- sification is one of the many instances which result from making internal structure the sole basis of scien- tific arrangement. It has originated, not from the legitimate use, but the abuse of our increased acquaint- ance with internal structure. There are professors of comparative anatomy, able but mistaken men, who are now striving to overthrow all received notions on na- tural affinities, and to substitute in their room certain dogmas of their own, founded on minute peculiarities of internal structure which they hold superior to all others. Against these speculative modes of classification we have frequently been obliged to enter our protest: it tends to render that which nature has made plain to every one, comprehensible to none but the closet pro- fessor. It increases rather than lessens the difficulties which already beset the study of zoology, and renders it a dry, repulsive study of bones and muscles. In re- ference to that theory, more particularly, which places
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3