Читать книгу The Butterfly Book - W. J. Holland - Страница 14

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"Winged flowers, or flying gems."

Moore.

At the base of all truly scientific knowledge lies the principle of order. There have been some who have gone so far as to say that science is merely the orderly arrangement of facts. While such a definition is defective, it is nevertheless true that no real knowledge of any branch of science is attained until its relationship to other branches of human knowledge is learned, and until a classification of the facts of which it treats has been made. When a science treats of things, it is necessary that these things should become the subject of investigation, until at last their relation to one another, and the whole class of things to which they belong, has been discovered. Men who devote themselves to the discovery of the relation of things and to their orderly classification are known as systematists.

The great leader in this work was the immortal Linnæus, the "Father of Natural History," as he has been called. Upon the foundation laid by him in his work entitled "Systema Naturæ," or "The System of Nature," all who have followed after him have labored, and the result has been the rise of the great modern sciences of botany and zoölogy, which treat respectively of the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

The Place of Butterflies in the Animal Kingdom.—The animal kingdom, for purposes of classification, has been subdivided into various groups known as subkingdoms. One of these subkingdoms contains those animals which, being without vertebræ, or an internal skeleton, have an external skeleton, composed of a series of horny rings, attached to which are various organs. This subkingdom is known by naturalists under the name of the Arthropoda. The word Arthropoda is derived from the Greek language and is compounded of two words, (αρθρον), meaning a joint and (πουσ), meaning a foot. The Arthropoda seem at first sight to be made up of jointed rings and feet; hence the name.