[LETTER XLVIII].
HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY.
After the very general idea that I have attempted to embody for you of the System of Insects; of the groups in which nature has arranged them, and their mutual relations; it will not be out of place, if I next state to you what has been effected by Entomologists towards reducing them to order: or, in other words, if I give you some account of the various Methods and Systems[1316], beginning with the earliest, that have appeared and had their day, which will include a history of the progress of our science from its commencement to its present era.
In writing the history of any science, two modes present themselves. We may either give a chronological review of all the circumstances and publications connected with it; or content ourselves with a rapid survey, dwelling only on the principal epochs, and those lights of the science who by their immortal labours gave birth to them. The latter is that on every account best suited to our present purpose, which I shall therefore here adopt.
There seem to me to be seven principal epochs into which the History of Entomology may be divided: viz. 1. The Era of the Ancients. 2. The Era of the revival of the science after the darkness of the middle ages. 3. The Era of Swammerdam and Ray, or of the Metamorphotic System. 4. The Era of Linné, or of the Alary System. 5. The Era of Fabricius, or of the Maxillary System. 6. The Era of Latreille, or of the Eclectic System. And 7. The Era of MacLeay, or of the Quinary System. All of these appear to form important points, or resting-places, in the progress of the science towards its acme; and of each of these I shall now proceed to give you a brief account.
1. The Era of the Ancients. To ascertain what attention was paid to insects in the earliest ages, we must have recourse to the most ancient of records, the Old Testament. In this sacred volume we are informed that after the Creation God brought the creatures to Adam that he might name them[1317]. Now the first man, in his unimpaired state of corporeal, mental, and spiritual soundness, under the divine guidance, doubtless imposed upon them names significant of their qualities or structure; which according to Plato was a work above human wisdom, and on account of which the ancient Hebrews deduced that Adam was a philosopher of the highest endowments[1318]. Whether on this great and interesting occasion he gave names to individual species, or only to natural groups, does not clearly appear. But probably as they were created, so were they brought before him "According to their kinds[1319]."
Subsequently Moses will be thought to have possessed no ordinary knowledge of insects, if we suppose, as the ingenious remarks of Professor Lichtenstein[1320] render probable, that he distinguishes as clean insects the Fabrician genera Gryllus, Locusta, Truxalis, and Acheta, which a person unobservant of these animals would have confounded together. This discrimination presupposes this knowledge of their general characters, not only in the Jewish lawgiver, but also in the people themselves to whom the precept was addressed, to whom it would otherwise have been de ignotis.
Allusion is made in Holy Writ to insects of almost every one of the modern Orders[1321]. They are represented as employed divinitùs sometimes to annoy the enemies of the Israelites, and at others to punish that people themselves when they apostatized from their God. The prophets frequently introduce them as symbols of enemies that lay waste or oppress the church: as the fly of the Ethiopians or Egyptians; the bee of the Assyrians; and the locust of the followers of Mahomet and other similar destroyers[1322]. That Solomon, amongst other objects to the investigation of which his divinely inspired wisdom directed him, did not deem insects, those "Little things upon the earth[1323]," unworthy of his attention, we know from Scripture[1324]; but as his physical writings are lost, we are ignorant whether he treated of their natural arrangement, their economy and history, or of the instruction they afford analogically considered. Where he has referred to them incidentally, it is generally with this latter view.