74: STUDY OF NATURAL HiSTORY. 
and he has this merit, which no others possess, that 
he gave a much fuller compilation upon all that was 
then known of the animal kingdom, than is to be 
met with in the records of our science. 
(31.) Having now traced the progress of that 
school, which, under the guidance of Linnzus, com- 
menced akout the year 1754, we must carry the at- 
tention of the reader back to the middle of the last 
century, when there arose, as we have before stated, a 
formidable rival to the luminary of the North, in the 
celebrated Buffon, who, with a pertinacity unworthy 
of his talents, set out with despising all system, and 
all technical helps to the communication of know- 
1edge ; and thus formed a school of his own It is 
the character and the progress of this school which 
we are now to trace. That it had plausible, and 
even valid, grounds for dissent, is readily admitted ; 
but had there been a cordiality of spirit between the 
respective founders and their disciples, their talents 
might have been united without prejudice to either, 
and science would have advanced, probably, in a 
dovble ratio to that in which it really proceeded 
It is easy to despise that which requires trouble to 
learn ; and to call an animal by a name of our own, 
regardless of that by which it is known to the world, 
is obviously neither a proof of sound sense or of 
good judgment. Yet such was one of the charac- 
teristics of the school of Buffon, who set out with 
rejecting the classic names of all his predecessors, 
substituting for them a barbarous nomenclature, 
composed of words half savage, half French, with- 
out meaning or without sense. Natural history, 
under such a principle, would have become unin- 
a 

