398 Mr. N. A. Vicors on the Natural Affinities 
successfully developed by the distinguished individual to whom 
I allude, before a Society which is familiarized with the principles 
in question. Itissufficient in these few preliminary observations 
to refer to the great revolution which the publication of these 
principles has effected in zoology. It has raised the science to 
that elevated rank among the subjects of human research, to 
which, whatever might have been its intrinsic claims, it was 
seldom, from the alleged minuteness of its views, allowed to 
assert its pretensions. ‘The investigation of Nature has ceased 
to be a mere work of observation: the mind becomes as much 
employed as the eye; and the intellectual character of the 
science as undeniably unfolds itself, as its general usefulness, or 
its acknowledged powers of affording delight. It is no longer 
devoted merely to minute and limited details, but to grand and 
sublime combinations ; no longer to the investigation of the pro: 
perties of the individual, but to that of the place which this fills 
and the part it sustains in the great system of Nature. The diffu- 
sion of these principles wrought the same change as may be sup- 
posed to have affected the views of the early astronomer, when his 
attention was withdrawn from the mere observation of the splen- 
did orbs of the firmament, from conjecturing their apparent sta- 
tions, and summing up their various names, to the more sublime 
contemplation of the harmonious system in which they revolve 
through infinite space. But the developement of this theory 
went still further. ‘To those persons who were induced to seek 
a more intimate acquaintance with the works of Nature by the 
noblest, and indeed only legitimate end of all such research— 
the desire of studying ‘‘ the wisdom of God in the creation;"— 
a new source of delight was thrown open, a new region of won- 
der revealed ; as they were now enabled to trace that wisdom not 
merely in the detail,—not merely in the beautifully combined 
mechanism of an isolated object,—but in the comprehensive 
! system 
