The Rev. P. Keith 07i the Sti'ucture of Animals. 5 



This is the generalization that tends so much to the advance- 

 ment of science, and that has, in fact, been made, in a more or 

 in a less philosophical way, by all physiologists from the ear- 

 liest times. We have seen hov^^ it has been done in botany*; 

 let us see how it has been done in zoology. Some, to cut the 

 matter short, go back to Adam, with the beasts, wild and tame, 

 submissively arranged around him-)-, — the tiger playing with 

 the kid, and the lion with the lamb, — and find in the first indi- 

 vidual of the race of men, the first classifier of animals; others 

 go back merely to the period of the Flood, and regard as the 

 first model of zoological classification the arrangements made 

 by Noah in his immense menagerie of the ark \ ; lastly, some 

 are content to begin with Solomon, whom they regard not only, 

 as a botanist, because it is said of him that " he spake of trees, 

 from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth 

 out of the wall §," but also as a zoologist, because it is but 

 reasonable to suppose that a writer who said so much about 

 plants, must have said something also about animals. But upon 

 grounds equally valid we might prove that Solomon was like- 

 wise a mineralogist, because he said very truly, as every mine- 

 ralogist must know, that "there is a time to cast away stones, 

 and a time to gather stones together || ." It would be a lame 

 and impotent conclusion, we confess, and therefore we do not 

 venture to draw it. 



But however this may be, the most ancient model of zoolo- 

 gical arrangement now extant is that which has been left us 

 by Aristotle, the celebrated philosopher of Stagira, and father 

 of natural history. It is founded chiefly on external characters, 

 but it makes a pretty near approach, notwithstanding, to the 

 arrangements of nature. Under a primary division into vi- 

 viparous and oviparous — that is, into such as produce their 

 offspring alive, and such as produce first an egg — animals are 

 distributed, in this arrangement, into four classes, — quadru- 

 peds, birds, fishes, insects. It is somewhat analogous to the 

 botanical arrangement of Theophrastus, borrowed perhaps 

 from his great master, by which he distributes plants into 

 trees, shrubs, undershrubs, and herbs ^, striking, but popular 

 rather than philosophical. Hence many alterations were in- 

 troduced into it by succeeding zoologists, as by Pliny, Gesner, 

 Aldrovandus, but particularly by our countryman Ray, till at 

 last the subject was taken up by Linnaeus, that great reformer 

 of systems, and brought under the scrutiny of his keen and 



[* See Mr. Keith's papers, on the External Structure of Imperfect 

 Plants, and on the Internal Structure of Plants, Lond. and Edinb. Phil. 

 Mag. vol. iv. p. 252, vol. v. p. 112.— Edit.] 



f Genesis, ii. 19. % Genesis, vii. 15. 



§ 1 Kings, iv. 33. || Eccles., iii. 5. 



^ lis^i (pvTuv imro^txi, to. A. 



