PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XV 



however, that I have not employed many technical terms, 

 and that I have endeavoured to communicate my ideas with- 

 out that barbarous apparatus of factitious words, which, in 

 the works of so many modern naturalists, prove so very re- 

 pulsive. I cannot perceive, however, that I have thereby 

 lost any thing in precision or clearness. 



I have been compelled, unfortunately, to introduce many 

 new names, although I endeavoured as far as possible to pre- 

 serve those of my predecessors ; but the numerous subgenera 

 I have estabJislied required these denominations ; for in things 

 so various the memory is not satisfied with numerical indica- 

 tions. I have selected them, so as either to convey some 

 character, or among thecommon names which I have latinized, 

 or finally after the example of Linnseus, from those of mytho- 

 logy, which are generally agreeable to the ear, and which we 

 are far from having exhausted. 



In naming species, however, I would recommend employ- 

 ing the substantive of the genus, and the trivial name only. 

 The names of the subgenera are designed as a mere relief to 

 the memory, when we wish to indicate these subdivisions in 

 particular. Otherwise, as the subgenera, already very nu- 

 merous, will in the end become greatly multiplied, in con- 

 sequence of having substantives continually to retain, we shall 

 be in danger of losing the advantages of that binary nomen- 

 clature so happily imagined by Linnceus. 



It is the better to preserve it that I have dismembered, 

 as little as possible, the genera of that illustrious reformer of 

 science. Whenever the subgenera in which I divide them 

 were not to be translated to different fiimilies, I have left 

 them together under their former generic appellation. This 

 was not only due to the memory of Linnseus, but it was ne- 

 cessary in order to preserve the mutual intelligence of the 

 naturalists of different countries. 



The habit, naturally acquired in the study of natural his- 

 tory, of thcy-mental classification of a great number of ideas, 

 is one of the advantages of that science that is seldom observed, 

 and which, when it shall have been generally introduced into 



