369 



PART III. 



COLLECTANEA. 



Art. L The General Subject. 



Test of a good Naturalist, — It was the opinion of Linnaeus, that the 

 superiority of a naturalist depends upon his knowledge of the greatest num- 

 ber of species ; and, considering the character of his works, as jfiilled with 

 brief, dry, technical descriptions of genera and species, arranged in artificial, 

 unnatural groups, somewhat after the fashion of an index, the opinion is 

 not much to be wondered at, though few naturalists, we think, of the pre- 

 sent day would covet the distinction, apart from other qualifications of a 

 higher order. A good gossiping naturalist might, no doubt, be made, by 

 storing the memory with Linnaean names and distinctions ; but, by making 

 these the chief study, all comprehensive and philosophical views of nature 

 would be frittered down into an endless and useless crowd of unarranged 

 ideas, like the disunited and scattered links of what ought to form a 

 beautiful and magnificent chain. It is indeed one of the most prominent 

 marks of a vulgar and uneducated mind, to associate ideas slenderly con- 

 nected, and to be deficient in the pov/er of grouping important facts, and of 

 bringing them into a luminous focus, as must be always the case with a mere 

 knower of species. I cannot better illustrate the character of such gossiping 

 naturalists, than by quoting Dame Quickly*s speech to Sir John Falstaff, in 

 Henry IV. ^ which is full of circumstances quite irrelevant and unconnected. 



" Hostess. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in 

 my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon the Wed- 

 nesday in Whitsun-week, when the prince broke thy head for likening his 

 father to a singing-man of Windsor; then didst thou swear to me, then, as I 

 was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. 

 Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in 

 then, and call me gossip Quickly, — coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar ; 

 telling us she had a good dish of prawns ; whereby thou didst desire to eat 

 some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst 

 not thou, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so fami- 

 liarity with such poor people ?" 



My test of a good naturalist, on the contrary, would be taken from the 

 power of combining a number of important facts into connected groups, so 

 as to establish useful general conclusions. A short example of what I mean 

 will be found in the extract from Wilson, respecting feline animals (p. 371.). 

 — J. Rennie. 



Technicalities of Sciefice. — The inutility of science, written in a merely 

 technical form, is well exemplified in the instance of Cicero. He was ad- 

 vised by his friends not to write his works on Greek Philosophy in Latin ; 

 because those who cared for it would prefer his work in Greek, and those 

 who did not would read neither Greek nor Latin. The splendid success of 

 his De Officiis, his De Finibus, his De Natura Deorum, &c., showed that 

 his friends were wrong. He persevered in the popular style, and led the 

 fashion. — Id. 



Vol. I. — No. 4. c c 



