RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 51 
popularity ; and his works may be perused, even 
now, with pleasure and advantage. Although he 
must have greatly contributed to extend a taste for 
these pursuits, yet his example assisted, without 
doubt, to throw upon our succeeding writers those 
fetters of implicit obedience to the authority of 
Linneus, which every fresh example more firmly 
riveted ; until at length it was deemed a sort of heresy 
to propose a new division, or to name a new genus. 
Pennant for many years held a constant corre- 
spondence with the ingenious and amiable White 
of Selborne; who, though not a professed writer 
upon systematic natural history, contributed very 
much to the information of Pennant, and whose 
popular and interesting letters have recently been 
published by so many different editors. White, in 
short, was one of those very few who then devoted 
his attention to the observance of nature; without 
making any attempt to generalise the facts so ac- 
quired. Natural history, to such observers, is but a 
mere amusement, fascinating indeed, and even use- 
ful, but totally disconnected with the objects of phi- 
losophic science. Entomology, which had been so 
much advanced on the Continent by the figures of 
Reesel, Sulzer, Sepp, and Scheffer, and by the scien- 
tific volume of Scopoli, now began to make some 
progress in England ; more indeed by the admirable 
figures of Moses Harris, than by the descriptions 
which accompanied them in the three volumes of 
Drury’s Exotic Insects * ; the first of which appeared 
* Tilustrations of Natural History. By D. Drury. Lon- 
den, 1770—1772. 3 vols. 4to. 
E2 
