20 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



inland, since the day that Weymouth found them so plentiful " fat 

 and sweet" at Monhegan, until the present time. Every year, and 

 every season since, has the sea yielded to the industry of the ad- 

 venturous fisherman, a life-giving, exhaustless harvest, and that 

 harvest has been as continually replenished and nurtured in the 

 coral fields of the ocean by an unseen but Almighty hand. 



CLASSIFICATION. 



By classification in natural history, is meant the arranging, or 

 grouping into classes, orders and genera, the several objects to 

 be described, which have properties and characteristics similar and 

 common to each other. Some system of this kind was fovnd ne- 

 cessary at a very early day, and some not very successful attempts 

 of the kind were made by the older na,turalists. The most suc- 

 cessful systematizer in natural science was Linneus, the Swedish 

 Philosopher, whose researches and writings opened a new era in 

 studies of this kind. His keen observation and talent of discrimi- 

 nation enabled him to develope a more simple, and at the same 

 time more practical arrangement, than any writer before him had 

 done. By his writings and lectures he rendered all the departments 

 of the science popular, and awakened an enthusiasm among the 

 scientific of every nation, that has continued to this day and been 

 of incalculable benefit to mankind. 



A theory had long obtained belief that God had created every 

 thing in nature according to a natural gradation, or natural orders ; 

 or, in other words, that there is a continuous series, or chain of 

 creation from the least to the greatest, and from the most simple 

 to the highest and most complicated organizations — that a perfect 

 knowledge of the whole range would enable us to place any par- 

 ticular object under consideration, unerringly into the exact place 

 or link in the great chain of created beings or things — that by 

 searching out the resemblances and affinities of the objects in ques- 

 tion, they could all be grouped into true natural orders, each order 

 sufficiently definite and distinct to warrant a specific name, or des- 

 ignation, and yet its extremities or borders (so to speak) so nearly 

 resembling those on either side as to enable the student to see and 

 point out where they meet and blend into each other. 



It is evident, that, in order to designate and accurately describe 

 these natural orders (admitting their existence,) a perfect knowl- 



