IiINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 23 



direct attempt at proselytism ; and the replies he received from 

 Dr. Lindlej, Th. Horsfield, A. H. Haworth, Westwood, Children, 

 and J. Eennie ought to have made him cautious in publishing * 

 statements as to the general acceptance of the " theory of circu- 

 larity and paralleUsm of natural groups." I have no doubt that 

 he was convinced of the truth of the principle, at any rate for the 

 greater part of the period of his scientific activity ; but we cannot 

 overlook the fact that the quinarian method served him well, 

 investing with a cloak of originality his treatises on those classes 

 of animals with which he was not well acquainted. I refer now 

 more particularly to Swainson's performance in Ichthyology. 

 When he began his ' Natural History of Fishes,' his direct ac- 

 quaintance with this class was limited to the species collected and 

 delineated by him in Sicily and Brazil ; he could not obtain much 

 help from the collections of the Zoological Society and the British 

 Museum, which were then in their infancy and inadequate for 

 study ; and the correspondence ^vith Yarrell shows how little 

 attention he had paid to Tishes since his return from Brazil f. 

 If he had been satisfied to compile his Natural History from con- 

 temporaneous ichthyological literature, he might have produced a 

 useful handbook. But to attempt, with his deficient knowledge, a 

 rearrangement of the class, and to carry it out, on quinarian lines, 

 down to the subdivisions of families, genera, and subgenera, of 

 many of which he had never seen or examined a specimen, was a 

 disastrous undertaking. 



I have allowed myself to drift into these observations, because 

 I have persistently ignored Swainson's systematic attempts in 

 Ichthyology. They indicate in no respect an advance in this 

 branch of science. I regard his work on Eishes as a literary 

 curiosity, the appearance of which was a misfortune to a man who, 

 by his indefatigable industry under by no means favourable cir- 

 cumstances, has contributed as much as any of his contemporaries 

 to the advancement of Zoology and its diffusion among the people. 



Before his departure to New Zealand in 1840, Swainson disposed 

 of his collections of specimens and drawings. We learn from his 

 correspondence, that they were offered by him in the first instance 

 to the British Museum and the Earl of Derby. However, as 

 Professor Newton informs me, they were in the end acquired for 

 Cambridge, and many of the specimens are still preserved in the 

 University Museum. The drawings were by some mistake shipped 

 to New Zealand, and lost during the A^oyage. 



I have found interpolated with Swainson's letters others, some 



* IS'at. Hist. Fish. i. p. 2. 



t Swainson missed the opportunity of being the first describer of Protoptcrics. 

 Th. 0. B. Weir, its discoverer, wrote to Swainson that he had specimens of a 

 new fish, sending him notes on its singular habits which ought to have excited 

 his attention. Weir offered to him anything he wished from his collection 

 (March 1837) ; yet althougli at that time Swainson was engaged with his MS. on 

 Fishes, he took no notice of Weir's discovery or specimens, and two years later 

 the latter passed into the collection of the College of Surgeons. 



