THE society's heritage prom the macleays. 593 



What awakened aud developed W. S. Macleay's interest in Zoology seems 

 primarily to have been his father's example, influence, and tine collection of in- 

 sects; and, secondarily. Ins sojourn in Paris, where he had the opportunity of 

 meeting Cuvier, Latreille, and other distinguished naturalists of that time, as well 

 as of apineciating the importance of the magnificent establishment of the Jardiu 

 des Plantes. 



It is quite possible to understand, from his own record, what W . S . Macleay's 

 aims were; and, from the modern standpoint, to estimate fairly what was amiss in 

 his method of trying to realise them, if Huxley's notable maxim be kept in mind, 

 that "the ablest of us is a cliild of his time, profiting by one set of influences, 

 limited by another." 



W. S. Macleay had profited by his intercourse with the French naturalists in 

 that, as a Zoologist, his status had improved, his horizon had enlarged, and his 

 standpoint had advanced. Dr. Leach, Keeper of the Natural History of the British 

 Museum, in succession to Dr. G. Shaw, from 1813-21, who was older than W. S. 

 Macleay, is said to have been the British naturalist who "opened the eyes of 

 English zoologists to the importance of those principles which had long guided 

 the French naturalists." W. S. Macleay supported him in this respect. In the 

 Horae Entomologicae, he recognised that, until the last few years, England stood 

 still at the bottom of the steps where Linnaeus had left her, while her neighbours 

 were advancing rapidly towards the entrance of the temple. He, therefore, en- 

 deavoured to pursue the example set by the new school of naturalists. He ac- 

 knowledges hi.;; indebtedness to the labours of Cuvier, Lamarck, Latreille, and 

 Savigny. and refers to Latreille as the father of entomology. He recognised, also, 

 more clearly than his contemporaries did, that there was a profound difference be- 

 tween affinity and analogj'. 



But as a systematiser — the propounder of principles, and of a system, of 

 classification — his limitations, apart from the imperfections of the knowledge of 

 his time, and from the fact that he was a private individual, unattached to a teach- 

 ing-institution or a museum, cultivating an interest in natural history in his 

 leisure-hours, came in no small degree from his English traditions and nurture, 

 from the earlier influence of the Time-Spirit of the land of his birth. For it was 

 in England, in his day, that the views respecting the significance of the Natural 

 System, which he advocated, chiefly prevailed. 



In his paper "Remarks on the Comparative Anatomy of certain Birds of 

 Cuba," read to the Linnean Society of London on November 21, 1826, W. S. 

 Macleay says: "If it be well said by M. Cuvier, that the natural history of an 

 ainmal is the knowledge of everything that regards that animal — then Natural 

 History, as a science, is only studied in effect when we are engaged in the pursint 

 of the natural system" (p. 13). W. S. Macleay was a naturalist in the special 

 sense that the primary and avowed object of his studies was the pursuit of the 

 natural system. Descriptive zoology, therefore, to him, was but a means to that 

 end; otherwise, it had little or no attraction for him; and, unless for special rea- 

 sons, he did not attempt it. It was the philosophical side of the subject that 

 appealed to him so strongly. But what is the natural system? He recurs again 

 and again to the theme, either in stating his own case, or in criticising the views 

 of others. For example, in the Preface to the Horae Ent., p. xiii., he says : "Thus 

 it requires neither talent nor ingenuity to invent an artificial system, and there 

 may be as many hundreds of such as there are heads to devise them ; but of natural 



