2.70 Mr. Bicheno on Systems and Methods in Natural History. 



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 

 alluded to, and those of loose application. For instance, the 

 word sort or group would as correctly express any natural as- 

 semblage of species, as sub-class, race, tribe, cohort, or stirps ,- 

 for what do we know of the relative value of the groups at- 

 tempted 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 Linncea among plants, and the Ornithorhynchus 

 and Hippopotamus among animals. Indeed in the recent work 

 of M. Latreille, Families Naturelles du JRegne 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 animals set at 

 naught all our classification by their osteology and mode of 

 bringing forth. 



The adoption of these numerous terms, intended to express 

 fixed ideas, must be looked on with suspicion. The terms 

 species and genus are too well established by custom, and are 

 so clearly the result of convenience, and moreover conform so 

 closely to the ordinary use of these words, that their utility 

 cannot be questioned ; but those numerous subdivisions cur- 

 rent among our neighbours, and sensibly increasing among 

 ourselves, may well be doubted as unphilosophical language. 

 To each of them is attempted to be assigned a definite value 

 beforehand, and an impracticable degree of precision; and 

 we deceive ourselves by fancying that we can deal with these 

 delicate and fleeting instruments of thought differently from 

 the rest of the world. But are we to attempt to fetter nature 

 by our systems and terms? " Books should follow sciences, 

 not sciences books," says the immortal Bacon ; yet the adop- 

 tion 



