to include the Forficulidæ. Dr. Burmeister, and some other of the modern continental naturalists, are decidedly opposed to any other step, regarding the distinctive characters as of no higher value than family ones. It is certain that if the principles on which the insects in question are separated from the Orthoptera, were in every case acted upon, the amount of orders would be at least double what it is at present. But whatever may be thought of the expediency of multiplying the great primary divisions of the class, the differences alluded to afford a ready means for dividing the order, as it now stands, into several well defined and very natural families or subordinate groups. Several of these are so strongly marked, that according to the ingenious observation of Professor Lichtenstein, the Jewish lawgiver, when he delivered his instructions to the Israelites, regarding the kind of food they were to use, distinguishes, as clean insects, the Fabrician genera, Gryllus, Locusta, Truxalis, and Acheta. "Yet these may ye eat of every flying-creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet to leap withal upon the earth; even those of them may ye eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind."[1] Although Moses may have been led to do this non sine adflatu divino, still the discrimination, as Mr. Kirby remarks, presupposes a knowledge of their general characters in the people to whom the
- ↑ Leviticus, ch. xi. 21, 22.
