200 Scientific Intelligence. — New Publications. 



many of its parts ; for it must be admitted, that the greater 

 proportion of his groups are exceedingly natural, and well com- 

 posed. He always had natural affinities in view ; his aim be- 

 ing constantly to place genera together in a certain allied pro- 

 gression, as far as their relationship could be ascertained *. In 

 regard to the excellence of the genera themselves, their con- 

 sonance with nature is rendered still more evident, by the large 

 proportion of these which Cuvier and Latreille, have retained as 

 leadijig generic divisions in their recent works, certainly the most 

 skilful approaches which have been made towards the esta- 

 blishment of a natural system. Linnaeus was probably aware 

 of the extreme difficulty, or rather, we should say, the utter 

 impossibility of a perfectly natural arrangement, for he con- 

 fesses, in his Philosophia Botanica, his inability to define the 

 great divisions called orders^ on account of their being so con- 

 nected with each other, by several points of affinity, as to form 

 a map, rather than a linear series. The observation may be 

 applied with equal truth to the subjects of the animal kingdom. 

 Certain species are grouped together by such analogies of form 

 and structure, as render their mutual resemblances apparent, even 

 to an ordinary observer. To these groups, the name of Natural 

 Families has been applied — but, that no general system of ar- 

 rangement exists in nature, by which the various genera may 

 be made to follow each other, like the series of links in a linear 

 chain, is evident, from the discordant, ever varying, and very 

 arbitrary methods employed, even by the most accomplished 

 naturalists of the day. We must therefore rest satisfied with 

 such a system as presents the objects of Natural History in con- 

 veniently arranged groups, the component parts of each of 

 which bear a considerable resemblance to each other ; without 

 seeking after what is unattainable, namely, the establishment 

 among these groups of a perfectly natural and well graduated 

 sequence. 



Some time after the death of the great Swedish Naturalist, 

 his Sy sterna NaturcB was revised and republished by Dr Gmelin. 

 A vast addition was made to the number of species, but as many 



" See Sir J. E. Smith's observations in the Supplement to the Encyclopsedia 

 Britannica, voL ii. p. 391. 



