Edward Newman

“ Perhaps no better genus was ever formed than Papilio of Linnæus; its diurnal flight, its erect wings, and its clavated antennæ, at first bid defiance to the systematist who attempts to bring any other group into contact with it; indeed, in Britain we have nothing at all that will avail us in this respect, which compels me to have recourse to exotics, an assistance which I shall only avail myself of when I find it quite impracticable to furnish the approaches from indigenous species, the reference to which is attainable by every entomologist. ”

“ Is there the least violation of probability in supposing the great and beneficent Creator the centre of His works, and from the centre pervading and upholding His wonderful and stupendous creation? And again, may not minor centres typify those beings on whom He has been pleased to bestow a marked superiority over those around them? Such an one is man, of whom it is said, "In His own image created he him." ”

“ If the entomologist do this he will find his positive knowledge much less than he expected,—he will perceive that he is book-wise and fact-foolish; if, therefore, he would wish to arrive at truth, he must strip himself of his borrowed garments and all the theoretical dogmas he may have, however incautiously, imbibed, and trust entirely to what he has discovered himself, or what has been discovered by those who had no theory to support but truth,—no end to answer but amusement ”

“ Any attempt to overthrow existing systems, originally devised and unanimously approved by men of superior talents and great acquirements, should not only be made but received with the greatest possible caution; but when, as in the arrangement of the objects of natural history, there exists no universally received plan, but each systematist has, for a few months, or at most, years, his little circle of immediate followers and admirers, one thing must be obvious,—that the true system is yet undiscovered ”

“ Distrustful of my own very limited knowledge of the subject, and fearful of encumbering science with crude theories and ill-defined divisions and characters which future discoveries may hereafter totally subvert, I shall content myself with observing, that I believe in the existence of such groups, and shall not presume to give them, at present, definitions or even names: the charge of ignorance is merited and easy to be borne, but the charge of attempting to establish divisions, in order to secure the paltry fame of naming them, I hope not to deserve. ”

“ A great proportion of the perfect insects have hyaline spots and patches in their wings, and nearly all of them are brilliantly coloured. It is known that Linnæus occasionally, as in Tenebrio and the present instance, made his genera recipients of species, which he found a difficulty in locating properly; but it is really astonishing to find a naturalist like Latreille abiding by so absurd a combination as the contents of the Linnæan genus Sphinx, and, in servile imitation, calling creatures which nothing but an unclouded sun ever tempts abroad—Crepuscularia. ”

“ I wish it to be observed, that Neuroptera, in the genera Psyche, Cloëon, Termes, Psocus and Mantispa, does not merely assume the form of the genera, Tinea, Chironomus, Formica, Aphis and Mantis, but actually possesses the characters and appearance of the classes Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, Hemiptera and Orthoptera. The obviously homogeneous character of Lepidoptera and Coleoptera, although, probably, containing in every sub-class more species than the whole of Neuroptera, clearly disproves the existence of variety amongst their contents, equal to that amongst the contents of Neuroptera. ”

“ Again, on the subjects of orders, a term I have already been induced to use now and then, I am quite aware that I here am guilty of another misdemeanour, and more especially as I call them natural orders, meaning thereby orders among the contents of which nature has established the similarity; and to the formation of which "the cunningly devised fables" of man have contributed but very little; and meaning also that nature has implanted in us all, more or less, the power of distinguishing such orders by a mere glance, and without any reference to our books. ”

“ I would also plead the poverty of our British Fauna in the sub-class, and my almost entire ignorance of exotic Phalænæ. Even supposing myself acquainted with all our indigenous species, they will barely furnish a systematist with a clew to the truth: you may pick up a single link of a chain, yet fail to discover the length of that chain, or the situation in that chain which the link originally possessed. ”

“ To a sub-class selected for a centre, two qualities are indispensably requisite. They have been previously given from Mr. MacLeay, who, it will be remembered, discovered that one of each of his five groups contained types of the other four, besides a type peculiar to itself. This quality must hold good in any group thus selected for a centre; it must contain types of the six surrounding groups in the first place. Now, is this applicable to Papilio? Have we not already experienced the greatest difficulty in finding three good approaches, the smallest number which a sub-class can possess? ”

“ It seems to me highly improbable that a Creator, who has, with such unerring wisdom, adapted means to their destined ends, should have performed any part of the mighty work of creation without a fixed and perfect design. ”

“ Some individuals would, I believe, argue that no fixed system or plan prevails in nature, but that each individual species exists quite independently of, and unconnected with all the rest; others, again, allow that there is a system, but without any other division than that of species; thus theoretically disallowing those plain and universally intelligible groups, which we term beasts, birds, fishes, and insects. ”

“ Many theories, which read plausibly enough, we find, on attempting to apply them, totally at variance with facts: I will, therefore, not content myself with making unsupported assertions, but endeavour to summon to my aid fragments of the great whole, and array them before the reader, in what I consider order, asking of him, as an especial favour, that he will examine and compare the genera and species which I shall mention as related to each other in corroboration of my scheme ”

“ Now the fact, as M. Latreille supposes, of having no antlia, argues most forcibly the impossibility of uniting this genus either with Sphinx or Zygæna; for the sub-class Sphinx not only possesses the most elongate and conspicuous antlia of any sub-class, but retains this character to its very circumference, and imparts it to approaching groups, whose types will be found entirely aglossate: its similarity therefore in shape to the Sesiæ, which tribe is generally understood to include the Ægeriæ, is merely that relation of imago which I have before so repeatedly pointed out. ”

“ But, in truth, the first attempt of the systematist should be to place classes properly, and these disconnected species will, after a time, find appropriate places: they were no more created without a design than man; and their Creator, doubtless, has appointed them a station, although man, whose wisdom is utter ignorance, has not yet been able to discover it. It is impossible for the entomologist not to observe the general similarity, the family likeness if I may so express it, which exists between these genera ”

“ It being then incontrovertibly established, that nature possesses, on the grand scale, two tendencies; one, the formation of globes or circles, the other, the disposition of inferior creations to cluster round superior ones, is it too great a presumption to imagine tendencies thus exhibited in the creation and government of worlds, as in some degree typical of the design from which universal nature has been modelled? ”

“ It may perhaps be, that the apparent difficulty of arranging the objects of natural history thus, as it were, in a mass, has operated somewhat against the proposal or adoption of a plan like the present; but if we come to consider the question with the cool deliberation which an inquiry of this kind requires, I trust it will be generally considered that our first object is to discover, if possible, nature's plan; our second to adapt it to our own artificial ideas. ”

“ Presuming, therefore, that a septenary and circular arrangement, with one seventh superior to the others, does exist in nature, its first application must necessarily be made to the result of the six days' creation, which I consider as typifying six grand groups of matter, and the seventh—the day of rest, emphatically commanded to be kept holy—that Omnipotence who created and presides over the stupendous work. ”

“ Has an elongate cylindrical downy larva, which rolls itself into a ring when touched; the pupa changes in a close gummy oval cocoon, remarkably small for the size of the imago. Among the exotic species of Lasciocampa, we find in the males particularly slender bodies, expansive wings, the inferior grooved to receive the abdomen, and diurnal flight, all of them characters so indicative of an approach to Papilio, that we scarcely hesitate a moment in assigning it the approaching station, not but I expect fully that time will eventually furnish us with a connexion on each side yet more conclusive. ”

“ The next striking departure from the type occurs in having the abdomen furnished with tufts or brushes, which the insect spreads as it hovers over flowers, somewhat in the manner of a bird's tail. The long porrected antlia also has a resemblance, perhaps rather fancied than real, to the slender bill of a humming-bird, whence the tribe has received with us the name of English humming-birds. The genus Sesia I will place on the circumference of the circle, not doubting but nearer approaches to the Cossi may be discovered, or are even now known, but no better exists among our own Sphinges. ”

“ How then can we hope, by any good fortune in discovery, to make ourselves masters of three other entirely new ones, and these to sub-classes to which it is confessedly the most unlike? Phalæna, on the contrary, presents us with Lasiocampa, Ægeria, Cilix, Lithosia, Apatela and Orgyia, five of which genera beautifully typify the approximating sub-classes. ”

“ The second position, that it should contain a type peculiar to itself, is almost a matter of course; but my own idea is, that the very centre should not only be a type of the genus, or order, or sub-class, but of the class itself of which it is the centre. From this position, then, a further and still more important question arises,—What is the type of Lepidoptera? The parts which afford the generic characters of Lepidoptera, and, I believe, generic characters in the perfect state are the only ones of any value, are these—the mouth, palpi, antennæ and wings ”

“ This similarity is by no means confined to a cursory glance at the insects, but bears the test of a minute anatomical investigation, the antlia, palpi and antennæ demonstrating the approach quite as forcibly as the form and appearance of the whole insect. Where a tribe has short biarticulate palpi, a genus departing from the type will assume elongated and triarticulate palpi, should another tribe with those characters approach it: again, should a tribe with long antlia approach a tribe whose character it is to have none, we shall be sure to find a genus without antlia at the point of approach. ”

“ MacLeay has given it as his opinion "that it is among insects above all other groups of animals, that owing to their myriads of species, the mode in which nature's chain is linked—a mode, the knowledge of which comprises all knowledge in natural history, will be most evident, and therefore most easily detected." ”

“ Should the present, or any future scheme, prove incontrovertible,—and incontrovertible the real system of nature must be, whenever discovered,—it will then be high time to meditate on the best plan of rendering it serviceable to ourselves, and available to science ”

“ Now no system, hitherto suggested, will at all cope with this; it has been the plan, and I imagine the fault of all our systems, that they are so constructed as to be incapable of receiving a character from, or imparting it to, more than a single individual: hence they never can possess capacity sufficient to exhibit those endless chains of relation which the mind so luxuriates in tracing. ”

“ I will suppose them a system composed of an immense multitude of material beings, organic and inorganic, animate and inanimate, revolving in circles around the central, everlasting abode of that Providence who created, pervades, and upholds them, and can, by the act of His will, either annihilate or create anew,—a supposition much more readily admitted than rejected ”

“ Natural Order—Notodontæ. The larva is naked, has sixteen feet, and is, in different genera, furnished with excrescences, and apparent distortions in various parts of the body. The eighth or last pair of feet, and three last segments of the abdomen, are elevated; when the insect is at rest, the head and first segment are raised in a similar manner. In one genus (containing Camelina) the head and extremity of the abdomen nearly meet over the back, when raised in this singular manner. The posterior feet are frequently useless in walking; in some genera, entirely obsolete. ”