that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 517 



bracing more than their due proportion of variety of forms, — 

 although even at the present moment more than five times the 

 number of species have been examined and described, beyond 

 what could have come under his observation ; 5?^et such were the 

 enlarged views of his exalted mind, that his principal divisions 

 are still sufficiently extensive to embrace with some slight modi- 

 fication all the later acquisitions of science, and so conformable 

 to our more advanced and accurate knowledge of nature, as to 

 require little, if any alteration. These his great primary divi- 

 sions, under whatever denomination we may receive them, whe- 

 ther, according to the great influx of materials that have latterly 

 swelled out their limits to an almost disproportioned extent, we 

 give them a more comprehensive title than that by which he 

 designated them; whether, in short, they may be denominated 

 Tribes, or Families, or Genera — the name signifies nothing, — will 

 still form the justest foundation for all researches in Ornithology, 

 and be a sort of tribunal to which every grander affinity and every 

 leading character may be referred for decision. These primarj^ 

 divisions, it is almost unnecessary to add, have been my chief 

 guide in the course of this inquiry. These I have studied with 

 still increasing admiration, and have adopted with almost bound- 

 less confidence. And were it indeed necessary that I should 

 subscribe to the views of an individual, or admit any other dic- 

 tator in my pursuit of nature, than Nature herself, the authority 

 to which I would bow, and the light that I would implicitly fol- 

 low, should be the enlarged and philosophical mind of the im- 

 mortal Swede, ;n. ?1 ysr 



.' ; . •-■ ' i. 



3x2 XXIII. De- 



