that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 517 
bracing more than their due proportion of variety of forms, — 
although even at the present moment more than five times the 
number of species have been examined and described, beyond 
what could have come under his observation ; yet such were the 
enlarged views of his exalted mind, that his principal divisions 
are still sufficiently extensive to embrace with some slight modi- 
fication all the later acquisitions of science, and so conformable 
to our more advanced and accurate knowledge of nature, as to 
require little, if any alteration. ‘These his great primary divi- 
sions, under whatever denomination we may receive them, whe- 
ther, according to the great influx of materials that have latterly 
swelled out their limits to an almost disproportioned extent, we 
give them a more comprehensive title than that by which he 
designated them ; whether, in short, they may be denominated 
Tribes, or Families, or Genera—the name signifies nothing,—will 
still form the justest foundation for all researches in Ornithology, 
and be a sort of tribunal to which every grander affinity and every 
leading character may be referred for decision. ‘These primary 
divisions, it is almost unnecessary to add, have been my chief 
guide in the course of this inquiry. These I have studied with 
still increasing admiration, and have adopted with almost bound- 
less confidence. And were it indeed necessary that I should 
subscribe to the views of an individual, or admit any other dic- 
tator in my pursuit of nature, than Nature herself, the authority 
to which I would bow, and the light that I would implicitly fol- 
low, should be the enlarged and philosophical mind of the im- 
mortal Swede. 
3x2 XXIII. De- 
