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; and, therefore, surely it is competent to every one, however unqualified, to try his hand at the task: that the true system has not been discovered, is admitted by Mr. MacLeay, the only individual who has made any thing like an approach to it; for, in the preface to the _Annulosa Javanica_, which appeared subsequently to the _Horæ Entomologicæ_, in which his circular and quinary system is proposed, he acknowledges, that, "as yet, we have not even arrived at the threshold of nature's temple." 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. 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. If we consider that no muscle, tendon, or vein, however minute, whether in man, the highest, or in those animals which may be reckoned the lowest grade among created beings, but has functions appointed for it regularly to perform, and that no single portion of our frame can be parted with, without occasioning us inconvenience, it seems fair to infer, that no single atom, or no one created thing, exists without filling some appointed place in a great and perfectly organized and arranged whole; however far that whole may, and must be, above our limited understandings. To doubt the existence of a natural system appears to me to be precisely equivalent to doubting a creation; for one cannot conceive the various tribes of animals to have received their being at the hands of an Omnipotent Creator, and yet to be indebted, at the same time, to chance for those gradual shades of difference from each other, which are found so harmoniously blending group into group, that the practised naturalist may follow up the same peculiarity of habit or structure, however varied in its development, from one to the other of the most opposite beings which you can place before him. Infinitely varied, however, as the course of such a peculiarity must be, the naturalist never finds those sudden departures from the regular flow of variation, which all