Mr* Bicheno's Paper on Systems and Methods, 403 



a Locke, not as a Linnaeus ; now to this proposal no Naturalist ought to 

 object, provided you found your metaphysical arguments, and *' abstract 

 reasoning," on some little observation of nature, and provided you illus- 

 trate your various positions by facts drawn from Natural History. How 

 far your Paper is strictly logical or metaphysical, I will not now discuss, 

 but I will venture to say that your abstract reasoning would have carried 

 much more weight with it, had you seasoned it a little more with illus- 

 trations drawn from observed facts. 



You are pleased upon the authority of Mr. Roscoe and Sir J. Smith, 

 which you very naturally esteem quite conclusive, to state to those who 

 break up the old genera into many new ones, " that the artificial and 

 " natural systems aim at two very distint objects." Although in these 

 degenerate days it is not very usual to talk of the natural system as 

 aiming at an object, I imagine that I understand what you would say, 

 in which case the information you would impart is not very original either 

 from your botanical authorities or yourself ; nor am I aware exactly for 

 whom you are charitable enough to intend it, as I know of no naturalist 

 who does break up, at least in your sense of the words, the old orders 

 and genera when he deems them good. I say in your sense of the words, 

 for I must suppose you mean your advice for those who destroy or take 

 no notice of the ancient groupes. You cannot surely, with your talents 

 for abstract reasoning, mean to attack those who not merely preserve them, 

 but by subdivision make us by the consequent analysis better acquainted 

 with their internal construction. A person who retains the groupes of the 

 older Naturalists, and moreover shews us how these may be resolved 

 again into others, evidently possesses a greater portion of that acquaint- 

 ance with individual forms upon which our knowledge of the natural sys- 

 tem must, as even you yourself allow, eventually be grounded. I can- 

 not believe that you who profess to understand the exact portion of merit 

 that belongs respectively to the various schools of Naturalists, now require 

 to be informed that those of the present day make it a rule to preserve 

 the ancient groupes where they deem them good, and only differ from 

 their predecessors in shewing how these groupes may be subdivided. 

 This, in fact, is the real progress of Natural History ; for on looking 

 back at the mode, for instance, in which Zoology has advanced, we find 

 that Aristotle's genera were tlie orders of Linnaeus, and that the genera 



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