[ 40 ]. 
XXV. On Meliapíhez, a new Natural Order, proposed and defined by 
J. E. Puancudn, Docteur-és-Sciences. Communicated by the Secretary. 
Read March 7th, 1848. 
THE task of naturalists, in tracing out the affinities of beings, is not unlike 
that of putting together the many and various parts into which a picture has 
been purposely cut. If of these parts a great number are wanting, the dif- 
ficulty of arranging the existing ones will be increased; groups will form 
themselves either isolated, or connected only by narrow links; and perhaps 
some parts, finding no immediate neighbour, will be forced into unnatural 
connexions. But in proportion as the missing pieces are collected, gaps will 
successively be filled and projecting angles find their corresponding sinuses ; 
until at last, by the connexion of all its parts, the picture will assume its 
perfect integrity. Such would be the progress and such the end of systema- 
tical natural science, if, according to an ingenious suggestion of Linnzeus 
with respect to plants, the juxtaposition of countries on a geographical map 
were a faithful pattern for the representation of the affinities which connect in 
one harmonious whole the innumerable objects of nature. Now, although 
such a disposition of natural tribes is but a degree of improvement over the 
imperfect linear series; although the outline of no group can be traced with 
mathematical precision; still every real advance in knowledge, every new 
object which is carefully compared with the mass of others, serves ultimately 
either to fill up intervening chasms, or to give a new direction to the outline 
of some group; or perhaps becomes itself the central nucleus around which 
parts, until then floating without determinate station, will gather themselves 
into one homogeneous mass. That such is the usual march of natural me- 
thods I need not to say in a place where the memory of Linnzus, although 
justly connected with the most ingenious of systems, is no less so with the 
happy and correct delineation of the groups which animate the vast picture 
