Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/29

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MEMOIR OF LATREILLE.
29

this place to all the works he published at different times; the very full list of them attached to the end of this biographical notice will indicate the extent of his labours, and prove useful, it is hoped, to the student who follows in the same track. Most of them appeared in periodicals, and all were received with great favour, as indicating extensive knowledge, sound and enlightened views, and no small degree of learning. The work which definitely fixed his reputation as the first entomologist of the age, was the well known Genera Crustaceorum et Insectorum secundum ordinem naturalem in familias disposita, &c. published at Paris in 1806-1809, in 4 vols. 8vo. It is a luminous exposition of the principles of natural arrangement laid down in his first work on the subject, and ever since its appearance has formed a principal guide to the student of Entomology. In this work the Linnean Insecta are divided into two groups or classes of equivalent value, Crustacea and Insecta, the former of which he characterises as possessing a heart and breathing by bronchiæ, and the latter as breathing by tracheæ. The class Insecta, the arrangement of which we shall give in a synoptical form as an example, is divided in the following manner:—