50 Mr. W, S. MacLeay o)i some Remarks o/M. Virey. 



nately,* confounding both ideas so much, as not to make the distinction, 

 so well drawn by Pallas, between bats and birds, although he had evi- 

 dently read it in the Elenchus Zoophytorum. But M. Virey will per- 

 chance say, that he has in this article Animal stated the analogies between 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and those that exist between Mam- 

 malia and Aves, and consequently must have been aware of the existence 

 of analogies as distinct from affinities. But this does not follow : for 

 although it be true that he has stated these analogies, it is evident from the 

 context that he considered them as affinities.f And as to the statement 

 of the analogies themselves, they are only borrowed by M. Virey ; for 

 those existing between Mammalia and Birds are given as such by Linnseus 

 in so well known a work as the Systema Naturce; and those existing 

 between the animal and vegetable kingdoms were first pointed out by 

 M. Desfontaines, whom I have accordingly cited in the Horce Entomolo- 

 gical and in my paper in the Linnean Transactions. 



M. Virey will now, it is to be hoped, understand why, — with every 

 wish to do him and his countrymen justice, — I did not, and moreover 

 why I could not in this case, cite him as one who had distinguished 

 affinities from analogies. Were the charge made against the Horcs 



* One quotation from the article Rapport will be sufficient: see p. 36.-— 

 " Quoique la co-ordination des families entre elles s'op6re comme celle des 

 genres suivant les memes lois d'analogie, il en est cependant d'ambigues." Now 

 the ambiguities he alludes to are relations of analogy ; and the co-ordination of 

 families among themselves is evidently dependent on the laws of affinity. In 

 the same way he argues as follows (p. 25). Bats and Flying-fish have some 

 analogy with Birds ; but the analogy is so small, that they cannot be placed 

 with them. Any person understanding the distinction between the two kinds 

 of relation, would evidently have written thus: " Bats and Flying-fish have 

 some analogy with Birds ; but the affinity existing between them is so small, 

 that they cannot be placed together." 



f See also article Rapport, p. 36, where he is clearly alluding to true rela- 

 tions of analogy, but calls them concatenations latdrales, which indicate hiatus 

 or lacunes to be filled up. So I suppose thought the ancient poets, when they 

 imagined the existence of an animal like the griffin, having the fore part of a 

 carnivorous bird, and the hind part of a carnivorous quadruped. It is the 

 grand error of Hermann's Tabula Affinitatum, that he also imagined analogies 

 to indicate blanks to be filled up; that is, to be affinities. 



