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Show I I Entered according to the act of congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-one, by G. & C. & H. Carvill, in the clerk's office of the southern district of New York. Philadelphia : Priotetl by James Kay, Jun. & Co. Printel's to the American Philosophical Society. No. 4, Minor Street. • I PREFACE( I). OvERWHELMED with scientific labours, and yielding, perhaps too easily, to the impulse of friendship and to my desire to serve him, M. Cuvier has confided to me that portion of this work which treats of Insects. These animals were the objects of his earliest zoological studies, and the cause of his connexion with one of the most celebrated pupils of Linnreus, Fabricius, who in his writings gives him frequent assurance of his high esteem. It was even by various interesting observations on several of these ani- (1) This preface is the same which stood at the commencement of the third volume of the first edition of this work. Having there confined myself to an exposition of the general principles, upon which my arrangement of the animals composing the Linmean class of Insects was effected, and having in the present edition made no change in that respect, the same observations are still applicable. Considered however with regard to the details, or to the secondary and tertiary divisions, that is to say, Orders, Families, Genera and Subgenera, this edition will be found to present a remarkable difference. It was impossible to place it on a • level with the actual state of the science, without modifying several parts of my former system, and without considerable additions, which, such has been the progress of Entomology, are so numerous, that even by filling two volumes instead of one, I have been barely enabled to give a ve1·y summary view of the multitude of generic divisions effectuated within the last ten years, and which are frequently founded on the most minute characters. This branch of Zoology has gained much from other and more positive sources, those of Anatomy. These observations I was the more imperatively bound to notice, as they formed part of the plan of the illustrious author of the "Jlegne Animal," and as they eerve to confirm the stability of the divisions I have established. By a perusal of the general remarks which precede them, the reader will be bettet· able to appreciate the motives which have determined these changes, and to feel the importance of the addenda that enrich the entomological portion of this edition. A simple comparison between it and that of the former will show, at a glance, that it has been entirely remouldcd, or that it is a new work which we now present to the world, rather than a new edition. |
