CLASSIFICATION. 73 



upon them, disclosing their admirable beauty,, their strange 

 peculiarities, and unexampled properties, all calculated to 

 astonish mankind with yet another work flowing from the 

 stupendous design of the universe. As if appalled by the 

 difficulty of the task, by the nicety of investigation, by the 

 obscurities hovering over their theme, naturalists seem, with 

 almost common consent, to have shrunk from it ; for the 

 most part merely skirting the boundaries — seldom advanc- 

 ing further, with few exceptions, than simply specifying such 

 external characters as are most obvious to the view, and 

 often content with hasty inspection of some mutilated or 

 depauperated specimen. Thence much was left undone, and, 

 till recent years, a great preponderance of results deduced 

 from such subjects as were never seen alive, in a perfect 

 state, or amidst their native element.'^ And again, " To bring 

 the vast multitude the nearer human comprehension, we en- 

 deavour to concentrate certain portions within a narrower 

 circle by such subdivisions as to our faculties include those 

 individuals allied by external or internal form and habits. ''' 

 In systematic arrangements external resemblance was long 

 too much regarded. In conchology, similarity of the shells 

 was chiefly attended, while the inhabitants of the shells 

 were greatly overlooked. So also in Zoophytes, by many 



