was ignorant that the application of the word Staphylinus to a genus of insects of the class Coleoptera, now divided into a great number of genera bearing other names, is not more ancient than the time of Linnæus, who was the first to employ this word in its present signification, without attempting to determine that which it bears in Aristotle, whom he does not quote.
As to the superior orders of animals, such as quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and reptiles, naturalists have been careful to establish, whenever it was possible, the identity of the species which they have described with those mentioned by the ancients; and for this reason, that the latter nave recorded facts that have not since been so well observed, and some that have not been observed at all, and because still they all form part of the science; but this is not the case with insects. Notwithstanding the imperfection of the science of entomology, the most difficult branch of natural history, the moderns have made such progress in it that they have nothing to learn from the ancients upon this subject; if, therefore, we except the domestic bee, the caterpillar of Bombix Mori, or the silk-worm, two species of insects as important as the largest animals in the history of man, of commerce, and of the arts, we shall find that the moderns have occupied themselves very little with what the ancients have said upon insects: at the same time, the names that they have borrowed from them prove that they had read their works upon the subject, and that they would willingly have established, by the identity of the objects upon which they were employed, a direct relation between their labours and those of the naturalists who had preceded them in ancient times; but they appear to have considered this to be too difficult, or as impossible to be undertaken with success. This is the reason that the number of dissertations upon this subject is so small; and even of the few that we possess the object is only to discover to what class of insects the ancient name should be applied, not to determine the genus or the species.
If the science of natural history has little to hope from such investigations, they may yet be subservient to the acquisition of a better and more exact interpretation of the ancient texts; and the difficulties with which the subject is attended ought not to induce us to neglect it. With regard to this, as well as all the uncultivated parts of the vast field of erudition, we may say, if this had been easy it is probable that it would not have remained undone.
The above are the considerations which have induced me to write, and submit to the Academy the researches[1], to which I was led by a question which one of my learned brethren did me the honour of ad-
- ↑ These researches were read before the Academy of Inscriptions, of which the author is a member, before they were communicated to the Entomological Society.
