§2 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
accurate, but masterly, yet, from not being referred 
to any of the modern genera, or accompanied by 
plates, they are, in numberless instances, perfectly 
useless, from the impossibility of determining the 
systematic characters of the animal described. This 
is greatly to be lamented, for he is the only writer 
on the zoology of South America who has recorded 
the economy and habits of the animals he describes. 
The entomological memoirs, collected into the vo- 
lume of Fuessly *, are partly in the style of narrative 
adopted by Reaumer, and partly systematic; but 
both are interesting and instructive, and the figures 
well executed. 
(36.) The narrative style of treating natural his- 
tory, adopted by Buffon and his immediate followers, 
however interesting and popular, was soon found to 
be quite inconsistent with the study of nature as a 
science; and even the most eminent of his own 
countrymen, when the fever of admiration had 
somewhat subsided, began to see the impossibility 
of going on without a more orderly method of ar- 
ranging their discoveries, and of communicating 
their-knowledge: some, therefore, adopted the Lin- 
neean or the Fabrician system, or invented one of 
their own; while others, of a higher order, perceived 
that not only system was to be implicitly followed, 
but that a much more complicated one than that of 
Linnzus was necessary. Hence arose a new school 
of zoologists in France ; who not only embraced the 
spirit of the Linnean mode of arrangement, but 

* J. G. Fuessly. Archives de l’Hist. des Insectes. Win- 
terthhour, 1794. 4to. 
