174 Mr.V1cons's and Dr. Honsrrkrp's Description of the 
before him ; and he equally saw, that the limits allotted to the 
life and the labours of man did not permit himself to enter it. 
But he lived sufficiently long to conduct the followers of nature 
to the Pisgah of science, and to show them, in his prophetic 
admonitions, the abundance of the territory which lay within 
their reach, and the paths through which they might hope to 
occupy that land of promise. Itis not, we conceive, too pre- 
sumptuous to affirm*, that he would himself have followed the 
same paths which we are now all pursuing in conformity with his 
instructions, had he lived to accompany and regulate our move- 
ments. i | 
Were there to exist, however, a case in which it would be 
allowable for a disciple of Linnæus to depart not only from his 
mode of nomenclature, but even from his general principles, that 
case is now before us. The subjects which we have attempted 
to arrange come from a country scarcely more than the name of 
which was known in the days of Linnzus. And it is to be 
recollected, that in the variety and novelty of the forms of its - 
animal productions, that country presents an almost totally in- 
sulated character. Among the number of birds which are now 
in the Society's museum, and which are daily increasing our 
Australian collections, not much above ten, certainly not twenty, 
species could have come under the inspection of Linnæus ; and 
these are species merely which are common to the islands of the 
* [n hazarding the above assertion, we shelter ourselves under the following obser- : 
vations of one of the most acute and scientific naturalists of our age :—* Jam hujus loci 
non est, magnum numerum novorum generum contra illos defendere, qui omnes spe- 
cies, quamvis alienissimas, ad genera Linnæana revocari jubent. Mihi certe sententia 
stat, Linnaum, ubi omnes species hodie notas vidisset, primum ipsum in novis generibus 
condendis fuisse ; ut vera erga virum immortalem veneratio nobis injungat, ea quæ ali- 
orum erroribus inductus male disposuerat, aut quie cum generibus ejus non bene con- 
gruunt, rectius distinguere et apte collocare; quod illius Jussu fecisse videbimur."— 
Illiger, Prod. Mamm. et Av. p. xiii 
Indian 
