RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 293 
in his Pinax, published in 1667, we find that the 
next publication of any moment bears the name of 
one of the great naturalists of this era, — Dr. Martin 
Lister, secretary to the Royal Society (then but 
recently instituted), and chief physician to queen 
Anne. The first work of this father of conchology 
makes known the spiders, the shells, and the fossil 
echini, &c. of Great Britain; all of which are not 
only well described, but are accompanied by tabular 
systematic arrangements, superior to any that had 
yet been framed, and fully equal to those subse- 
quently given by Ray. Lister, in fact, is unques- 
tionably the inventor of system; for he not only 
arranges the whole of the British araniz under 
greater and lesser divisions, but draws up a short 
and expressive specific character for each, which 
precedes his subsequent and more general descrip- 
tion. Had this remarkable man imposed upon each 
species a single additional word, by which it could 
have been at once distinguished, —had he, in short, 
given but a generic name to his groups, and a 
specific one to his species, —he would have been the 
first of nomenclators as he was of systematists ; and 
the unbounded praise that has been so profusely 
lavished upon Linnzus for the simplicity of his 
distinctions, would have been more justly merited 
by Lister, inasmuch as the invention of precise sys- 
tematic arrangement unquestionably belongs to the 
latter. Nor is this the only point in which Lister, 
so far as his researches extended, showed his su- 
pefiority over the great Swede, who subsequently 
monopolised the applause of mankind. Lister looked 
to the habits and economy of these insects for the 
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