34 DICTION AR V OF BIRDS 



foreign to any question with which a naturalist, as such, ought to deal — 

 though that herein he was only following the example of one of his 

 opponents, who had constantly treated the subject in like manner, is to 

 be allowed. This did not hinder Swainson, who had succeeded in 

 getting the ornithological portion of the first zoological work ever pub- 

 lished at the expense of the British Government (namely, the Fauna 

 Boreali-Americana) executed in accordance with his own opinions, from 

 maintaining them more strongly than ever in several of the volumes treat- 

 ing of Natural History which he contributed to the Cabinet Gydopeedia — 

 among others that from which we have just given some extracts — and in 

 what may be deemed the culmination in England of the Quinary System, 

 the volume of the "Naturalist's Library" on The Natural Arrangement 

 and History of Flycatchers (1838), an unhappy performance mentioned in 

 the body of the present work (p, 274, note). This seems to have been 

 his last attempt ; for, two years later, his Bibliography of Zoology shews 

 little trace of his favourite theory, though nothing he had uttered in its 

 support was retracted. Appearing almost simultaneously with that 

 work, an article by Strickland {Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 2, iv. pp. 219-226), 

 entitled Observations upon the Affinities ~and Analogies of Organized Beings, 

 administered to the theory a shock from which it never recovered, 

 though attempts were now and then made by its adherents to revive it ; 

 and, even ten years or more later, Kaup, one of the few foreign orni- 

 thologists who had embraced Quinary principles, was by mistaken kind- 

 ness allowed to publish Monographs of the Birds-of-Prey (Jardine's Contr. 

 Orn. 1849, pp. 68-75, 96-121 ; 1850, pp. 51-80 ; 1851, pp. 119-130 ; 

 1852, pp. 103-122 ; and Trans. Zool. Sac. iv. pp. 201-260), in which its 

 absurdity reached the climax. 



The mischief caused by this theory of a Quinary System was very 

 great, but was chiefly confined to Britain, for (as already stated) the 

 extraordinary views of its adherents found little favour on the continent 

 of Eiirope. The purely artificial character of the System of Linnaeus 

 and his successors had been perceived, and men were at a loss to find a 

 substitute for it. The new doctrine, loudly proclaiming the discovery of 

 a " Natural " System, led away many from the steady practice which 

 should have followed the teaching of Cuvier (though he in Ornithology 

 had not been able to act up to the principles he had laid down) and from 

 the extended study of Comparative Anatomy. Moreover, it veiled the 

 honest attempts that were making both in France and Germany to find 

 real grounds for establishing an improved^ state of things, and conse- 

 quently the labours of De Blainville, Etienne Geoftroy St.-Hilaire, 

 and L'Herminier, of Merrem, Johannes Miiller and Nitzsch — to say 

 nothing of others — were almost wholly unknown on this side of the 

 Channel, and even the value of the investigations of British ornithotom- 

 ists of high merit, such as Macartney and Macgillivray, was almost 

 completely overlooked. True it is that there were not wanting other 

 men in these islands whose common sense refused to accept the meta- 

 phorical doctrine and the mystical jargon of the Quinarians, but so 

 strenuously and persistently had the latter asserted their infallibility, 

 and so vigorously had they assailed any who ventured to doubt it, that 



