OF NEW HOLLAND. 339 



supials. I allude to the organs of mastication, which regulate 

 the food, and accord with the internal structure of the ali- 

 mentary canal ; and to the organs of locomotion, upon which 

 depend all the varied habits, and delicate and complicated 

 actions of life. The former has been hitherto exclusively at- 

 tended to by the makers of systems in Mammalogy ; it is not 

 too much to say, that the latter, and by far the more impor- 

 tant of the two, has been entirely neglected. Nor have sys- 

 tematists confined themselves to the really influential modifi- 

 cations of their favourite organs ; the golden maxim is con- 

 stantly forgotten, that all modifications are not necessarily 

 important, merely because they may happen to belong to an 

 important organ ; and the consequence is, that we have new 

 methods and new arrangements continually proposed, which 

 differ from their predecessors, not in any general or philoso- 

 phical principle of classification, but only in some new com- 

 bination of minor characters ; which, leading to some slight 

 difference in the distribution of the animals, is considered a 

 proof of creative power of mind, and of a capacity for gene- 

 ralization. Indeed it may be safely affirmed, that it is the 

 ordinary practice of inquirers in this branch, to commence the 

 study of Zoology by forming a system of their own, by which 

 they regulate their future studies, and of which they only dis- 

 cover the absurdity after having made some advance in the 

 science ; perhaps after having given it to the world as a great 

 improvement upon their predecessors. They begin where 

 they ought to finish ; they commence at the wrong end ; and 

 attempt to form generalizations before they are acquainted 

 with particulars : they may gratify their own vanity, but they 

 render Zoology ridiculous as a science, by departing from that 

 slow, modest, but sure path of induction, which proceeds pa- 

 tiently from the investigation of single facts, to compare and 

 combine them into general propositions, and which is alone 

 worthy of the name of Philosophy. There is no royal road 

 to the acquirement of zoological knowledge more than of ma- 

 thematical ; and he who would pretend to be a philosophical 

 zoologist, must not only be a diligent student of facts, but 

 must take care to admit no principles of classification but 

 such as are founded upon organic characters of appreciable 

 and admitted influence upon the habits and economy of ani- 

 mal life. This is the grand and leading principle of scientific 

 classification ; and it is only owing to a total and culpable 

 disregard of its authority, that the science of Zoology has 

 been so long retarded in the development of its really philo- 

 sophical principles, and so much overburdened by vague, ar- 

 bitrary and fanciful generalizations. 



