[31] Monographia Apum, Vol. II. p. 168. ON THE SUB-CLASSES, &c. OF LEPIDOPTERA. It may be thought a strange propensity to grapple with difficulties, that leads me to select Lepidoptera as a class, by which to exemplify, in detail, the septenary and circular arrangement. There is no class so puzzling to systematists, or for which science has done so little--no class is at present so badly arranged, and in none are barbarous combinations so much in vogue. Linnæus founded divisions at the outset, on characters, "loose, vague, and insufficient:"[32] modern genera have a little improved minor details, and but little, for their places appear to have been assigned them by lot, and without the slightest regard to similarity or approach: in a word, the arrangement of Lepidoptera appears to have been conducted by collectors, who aimed rather at a pretty picture than a related series; and all our writers have rushed headlong by the same path, without staying an instant to consider whether they were right or wrong, like boys playing at follow-the-leader,[33] each occasionally leaping some wider gap, or descending some more dangerous precipice than his predecessor, as though for the very love of frolic and bravado. _One_, a talented writer, an assiduous collector, a most accurate observer, hesitated awhile, it is true, and it was thought he would have broken the line, but no,--he kept precisely to the track of Linnæus and the rest of them, through Papilio, Sphinx, Bombyx, Noctua, Geometra, Pyralis, Tortrix, and Tinea; but, as he stood pledged to traverse no more than five fields, he hit on the ingenious expedient of asserting roundly, that the four last named were but one. In fact, the whole of this immense class presents, at this hour, nothing but a vast chaos, which seems to await the operation of some predicted spell to call it into order. [32] Particularly in the sections of Papilio. [33] Linnæus. [Illustration: SUB-CLASSES OF LEPIDOPTERA.]