Our country has the credit of having first sapped the foundation of a building, which, though by its founder[4] termed a commodious and well covered house, could not retain religion or reason among its inmates; indeed, the illustrious Swede was himself the first to see and to know that his mansion, however commodious, was built but on the sand; but knowing its imperfections, he cared not to alter them: he thought it enough to acknowledge without striving to amend them; in fact, he really seems to have considered the natural system, like the philosopher's stone, a mere _ens imaginationis_, the pursuit of which would be but a waste of time: he doubted not its existence, but he doubted man's ability to discover it. [4] Linnæus. Such was natural history when Mr. MacLeay's immortal work first diffused its splendour over the world. The power of thought, the profound research which he there exhibited, and the confession that "he was one of those who preferred an imperfect transitory glimpse of nature pure and unveiled, to a full view of the most commodious and ostentatious mantle that could be employed to conceal her features from the gaze,"[5] were such novelties in the science, that men scarcely credited their understandings: they began thinking, and have continued to think until the term naturalist is not, as it was but a short time back, immeasurably separated from that of philosopher. The extraordinary merit of the _Horæ Entomologicæ_ consists, not merely in disclosing and elucidating the invaluable fact, that a series of affinities, naturally arranged, has a constant tendency to describe a circle which eventually returns into itself: a still more important feature of the work is, that unceasing and determined endeavour evinced by its learned author to seek after, weigh, and examine facts, and to employ these alone in the support of his theories,--an endeavour indicative of that only true spirit of philosophy which has and can have no other end in view than the establishment of truth. [5] Horæ Entomologicæ, preface, p. xxiv. That I suppose Mr. MacLeay to have mistaken the number which nature has adopted in the combination and distribution of her various tribes--that I totally dissent from his idea of analogies and affinities, and from his division or rather adoption of Clairville's division of insects into mandibulate and haustellate, will be sufficiently evident from the contents of this little Essay; but in these and all other instances, in which I feel myself bound to disclose any difference of opinion which may tend to reveal or establish truth, I hope I shall always be found urging my objections with the deference due to an author from whose works I have extracted many important facts, and the still more important discovery which forms the ground-work of my own theory.