Natural History^ as a Means of Education. 1 1 



engine is to mechanics — a highly compressed form of power, 

 enabling us to do in a minute, and with infinitely less fatigue, 

 what before consumed an hour. 



Systematic terms, of a generic character, are now become 

 so common, that naturalists seem to have forgotten tlje great 

 importance which is attached to them. The subject, of which 

 they formed a part, engrossed nearly all the learning of the 

 latter part of the seventeenth century. It engaged the atten- 

 tion of Locke, Leibnitz, Descartes, and, more or less, of all 

 the master-minds of the age. Hume pronounces the discovery 

 of the real nature of these abstractions to be the greatest 

 and most important which has been made in modern times in 

 the republic of letters. These philosophers treated the subject 

 metaphysically ; Linnaeus showed its application to practice. 



It is very true that the English, who have a metaphy- 

 sical turn peculiar to northern latitudes, and were among the 

 first to adopt this prodigious concentration of intellectual 

 strength, have, in dwelling upon the engine itself, thrown away 

 some time in a less profitable application of it; yet this is 

 better than the abuse of it by some of our more southern 

 neighbours, who are frittering away the power, by breaking 

 down and dividing substantial genera, until they have almost 

 reduced them to particulars again. Sound philosophy, on 

 the contrary, requires, that, as our knowledge of particulars 

 increases, the generalisation of them should increase also. 



This is the proper business of the present generation. Our 

 forefathers have laboured to accumulate the particulars of 

 natural history, until they are become so redundant as to be 

 beyond the grasp of human thought. The only mode by 

 which they can be reduced within our power, is the just appli- 

 cation of the laws of generalisation, by persons standing pre- 

 eminent in science, and entitled to prescribe to inferior minds. 

 It is a small and paltry ambition which has inflamed the or- 

 dinary naturalists of the present day, that they should wish to 

 impose their own names ; that they should be mortified to find 

 themselves forestalled in their barbarous compounds ; and that 

 their boast should be in the number of these spurious off- 

 spring that may be affiliated upon them. 



Besides the placing of genera on a philosophic foundation, 

 we are indebted to Linngeus for the invention of a language of 

 such precise import as almost to supersede the necessity of a 

 draughtsman ; and also for the application of trivial names, 

 which is but another mode of treneralisinff. 



Whoever will look into the old authors, will see what a 

 wonderful facility is given to the acquirement and communi- 

 cation of knowledge by this simple contrivance. For instance, 



