that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 515 
solely to the letter of his works, but unmindful of their spirit, 
have palmed upon him a confined and restrictive code of arrange- 
ment, as foreign from the enlarged views of his own enlightened 
mind, as from the disposition of that Nature of which he was so 
faithful an interpreter. What was intended to have been applied 
to her works on a general and expanded scale, they would apply 
upon the minutest : they would make that system which they wish 
to uphold, an universal and unalterable standard for the adjudica- 
tion of every object that may be referred to it, however great or 
however contracted may be its dimensions. They would preserve 
this system, in short, as it came from their master's hands, un- 
enlarged and undiminished ; admitting no increase to suit the 
increasing knowledge of the times, no modification to embrace 
the accumulating modifications of Nature. It is not therefore 
to be wondered at, that the adversaries of this great man should 
have rejected in toto a system, which either their interest or 
inclination did not permit them to investigate, much less treat 
with justice, and which, thus modelled to their hands, they found 
unsuited to any practical purpose. | 
But to arrive at a just knowledge of the question before us, 
we must judge from the merits of the case itself, and not from 
the partial views of either friends or opponents. It is to be re- 
membered that there are three great stages in the progress of 
natural science, after it has assumed somewhat of a definite form, 
which are marked by decisive limits. The first is confined to the _ 
investigation of the more extensive affinities that prevail among 
the scattered productions of nature, and to the arrangement of 
them according to these leading affinities. ‘The second takes 
place at that period when the materials of the naturalist become 
too far multiplied to admit of being classed in the more extended 
departments alone, and when his business is rather the investiga- 
tion of differences than of affinities, and the subdivision of groups 
VOL. XIV. ox rather 
