494 Mr. BicuEeno on Systems and Methods 
mode, which was to place this residue at the end.  Linnæus too 
was very correct when he pronounced his natural orders to be a 
* Fragment ;” and those persons who imagine it to be necessary 
or advantageous to find a place for every thing, and to divide and 
split for the purpose of making such places, appear to lose sight 
of the chief object of the natural system, and to destroy its utility 
as an instrument of general reasoning. 
The French writers in general are prone to combine in their 
systems the very distinct objects of individualizing and genera- 
lizing. They are for ever subdividing where the great aim 
should be to combine, and thus they detract from the utility of 
their arrangements for either purpose. It is they who have 
countenanced the use of sub-classes, cohorts, tribes, stirpes, sub- 
genera, and sub-species ; and they also are the great contribu- 
tors to the minute division of genera... Strictly speaking, in the 
natural system we should employ but few terms of the kind al- 
luded to, and those of loose application. For instance, the word 
sort or group would as correctly express any natural assemblage 
of species, as sub-class, race, tribe, cohort, or stirps; for what 
do we know of the relative value of the groups attempted to be 
pointed out by these expressions? And how can we say they are 
not co-ordinate or commensurate with each other? The great 
division of cotyledonous plants may, for aught we know, be only - 
equivalent to the order of Grasses; and a genus in some cases 
seems as distinct as any class, as Parnassia and Linnea among 
plants, and the Ornithorhynchus and Hippopotamusamong animals, 
Indeed in the recent work of M. Latreille, ** Familles Naturelles 
du Règne Animal," he has arranged the monotrematous animals 
in a class by themselves, and has made two orders; in one case, 
consisting of a single species, the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, and 
in the other, of two other species before considered as belonging 
to that genus. Thus it is, as M. Cuvier remarks, that these ani- 
mals 
