of certain Birds of Cuba. 9 



universe given to it from the days of Plato and Cicero*, that 

 Linnaeus, Pallas and Desfontaines, have mentioned certain ana- 

 logies in nature as distinct from affinities t ; and that one of the 

 most distinguished zoologists of the present age and a foreign 

 member of this Society, Professor Gotthelf Fischer of Moscow, 

 has stated the progression of certain series of affinity being in cir- 

 cles :|.. I can safely say, however, that as I arrived at the know- 

 ledge 



* The ancient authors on this subject, however, really deserve but little attention ; 

 for they all arrived at their conclusions by the a priori mode of argument, — a mode 

 totally inapplicable, nay even injurious, to a science like Natural History, which must 

 always depend upon experience and observed facts. 



, t Aristotle in the Historia Animalium, lib. ii. c. 1. says, when speaking of animals 

 generally. To. /isv xar uvaXoyiixv ahu^opu jx,ovov, tco yevst Se hepct. Now if this passage 

 be taken literally, we must give him full credit for making the distinction between affi- 

 nity and analogy. But I confess, that on looking at the context, and above all, at his 

 explanation of an arrangement x«t' avaXoyiav, as above mentioned, I suspect that his 

 idea of analogy did not reach beyond the comparison of organs : as when we say the 

 wing of a bird represents the hand of a man ; which comparison, however necessary to 

 the full understanding of the analogies between different beings, is very far from ex. 

 pressing the whole of them. However this may be, it is curious to observe that so 

 little attention should have been paid to this observation of the father of natural history, 

 that " some animals, which agree in analogy, are yet different from each other in affi- 

 nity." 



:{: It seems to me to be quite unnecessary to discuss in this place what Plato meant 

 by saying, that in nature all things terminate in their contraries, — an expression which 

 Linnaeus borrowed in his Diary, and appears to have attached meaning to as con- 

 nected with the number five. Such disquisitions are as little Ukely to prove satisfac- 

 tory, as those arguments drawn from the first chapter of Ezekiel, which led a Northern 

 writer, Mr. Macnab, to declare a circle to be the plan of Nature, long before I 

 attained the knowledge of the fact by observation. Naturalists have nothing to do 

 with mysticism, and but little with dpriori reasoning. I have therefore infinitely less 

 hesitation in citing the following passage from Hermann : — " Neque enim ad affinita- 

 tem indicandam per omnem chartse latitudinem diducere hneam placuit, sed inter 

 nomen et chartae marginem posuimus asteriscum qui flex&, in orbem charts incidit in 

 similem alium cujus ope duo in utr&que extremitate posita corpora inter se conjun- 

 guntur, unde vairh implicitae et concatinatae inque circulum redeuntes affinitates tanto 



VOL. XVI. C magis 



