CRITICAL NOTICES OV NEW PUBLICATIONS. 329 



congruous affinity of man with brutes, adopted by Linnaeus, Cuvier, 

 ^Macleay, and other celebrated philosophical writers. There is not 

 merely an innate repugnance, but an absolute disgust and abhor- 

 rence in every human being, ignorant or enlightened, against the 

 admission of this relationship. So sensible was Aristotle of this re- 

 pugnance, that, in his system of the animal world, he excludes man 

 entirely from his scheme ; and his example has been followed by 

 Willughby and Ray. In man, therefore, this enlightened writer 

 observes, — 



'' We behold that creature which connects those two primary orders of 

 beings, the intelligent and the unintelligent. He is, by far, the lowest 

 in the scale of the first; yet to that circle of spirits he unquestionably 

 belongs. He is one of them, not as a proscribed and degraded race, to be 

 cut on from all fellowship with the heavenly hosts, and with the bare claim 

 of immortality to sanction his admission into their order ; but he is offered 

 the means o^ restoration to what he was in that golden age, when he conversed 

 even with the Highest Intelligence, and was the companion of angels. This 

 restoration will place him again in direct communion with those beings to 

 whom, by his immortality, he is legitimately connected. He will be, on the 

 one hand, ' like unto the angels ;' and on the other, his spirit will be united 

 to the holiness and purity of the Omnipotent. Here, then, are the true affi- 

 nities of renovated man. • « • Let us but look to the life of the But- 

 terfly, and then ask what naturalist would thinkof classing it among apterous 

 insects because, in its first and lowest stage of existence, it is a wingless grub ?" 



It may be said that most of these expositions and theorems have 

 been before promulgated, in some shape or other, by writers on this 

 branch of philosophical inquiry ; but, allowing that to be partly the 

 case, they are distributed amongst large and unwieldy works, and 

 Mr. Swainson judiciously availing himself of the best authorities, 

 ancient and modern, has not only embellished them with his own 

 enlightened and penetrating observations, but added much original 

 matter to the stock of ideas already disseminated. In fact, his com- 

 mentaries have an air of such originality and genius, that, altoge- 

 ther, they appear more the result of pristine contemplation than 

 such as are collected from the gleanings of authors. Truly may it 

 be said that there is no subject which has not been investigated by 

 lettered men ; if, therefore, an author speak on any given theme, 

 he may be accused, by the unreflecting, of having merely dilated on 

 the conceptions thrown out by a previous writer ; but we hold that 

 he who brings a discriminating judgment, high genius, and strong 

 mental powers, to the further and more clear development of a to- 

 pic already freely discussed by others, but not positively set at rest 

 by its conclusiveness, is equal, in literary pretentions, to him who, 

 by chance, first opened the road to inquiry. 



We regret that our space will not permit us to examine this work 

 further ; possibly we may, in a future number, again refer to it, 

 and shew the care and aptitude with which " The Natural History 

 and Classification of Quadrupeds^' has been drawn by Mr. Swain- 

 son. At present, we are compelled to quit the subject, not, how- 

 O^er, without first strongly recommending this interesting publica- 



