516 Mr. N. A. Vigors on the Naturul Affinities 



rather than their combination. The third and more perfect 

 stage is when the advantages of both these methods are embraced, 

 when both the affinities and the differences of natural objects 

 are so far consulted, and the synthetic and analytic modes of 

 arrangement so far combined, as to give a view of Nature with 

 reference as well to her greater as her minuter divisions, and to 

 dispose her productions according to their grander proportions 

 as well as in detail. It is evident that a vast accumulation of 

 materials must be laid before the man of science, before he can 

 venture upon this last and most finished mode of investigation ; 

 and that even at the present moment, although he may make the 

 attempt, he can give no more than a faint and powerless outline 

 of the face of nature, abrupt in some points, and a total blank in 

 others. It must be equally evident to those who are aware of the 

 truly infant state of the science when Linnaeus undertook the 

 revision of the groups of Ornithology, that he- could have ad- 

 vanced no further than the first of the above stages in his attempt, 

 and could have had no object at the time beyond the investiga- 

 tion of the affinities which unite the larger groups. And here lies 

 his great and transcendent merit. — 1 speak of course only of his 

 exertions in Zoology, and in that branch of it still more particu- 

 larly to which our attention is at present confined. — And in this 

 point of view it might afford us matter for astonishment, were we 

 not acquainted with the matchless powers of his mind, to observe, 

 that, notwithstanding his limited acquaintance with species, his 

 mode of arranging Nature's grand outlines is more enlarged in 

 its views, and more conformable to the affinities of her groups, 

 than that of any of his successors, in despite of all the advantages 

 with which time, and the new lights that are every day thrown 

 upon science, have enriched them. In fact, although the pro- 

 ductions of at least one fifth part of the world were almost en- 

 tirely unknown to him, — and those, it may be remembered, em- 

 bracing 



