86 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY- 
a much nearer approach to that of nature than any 
which had preceded them, because their groups are 
founded upon general considerations. The orders 
of Linnzeus were subdivided and remodelled, the 
nature of the molluscous, radiated, and annulose 
animals defined with great skill, and every part of 
the animal kingdom was minutely analysed and 
more correctly defined. The result of all this was 
collected into the Régne Animal of the celebrated 
Cuvier, which may be termed the Systema Nature 
of this era, and which certainly contains a greater 
mass of zoological information than is to be found 
in any modern work. It has, with justice, been 
compared to a mine of information, rich both in the 
discoveries of the author and of his cotemporaries. 
“ But the disposition and ability to make use of 
this one, to give it the proper form and polish, is 
not, it seems, a necessary concomitant to skill in 
extracting it, or to the patience required before it 
could have been collected for use. At least, it is 
but too visible, and has been too often and too 
justly remarked, that no person of such transcendent 
talents and ingenuity ever made so little use of his 
observations towards a natural arrangement as 
M. Cuvier.”* The amateurs of zoology, in this 
country, ever prone to judge in extremes, after 
overlooking the labours of this great man for nearly 

* Hore Entomologice, p. 326. And yet it has been 
stated, in a public éloge pronounced in this country, that Cu- 
vier eminently possessed these powers of “ legitimate and 
inductive generalisation” in arranging the animal series, in 
which, as Mr. M‘Leay truly observes, he was so notoriously 
deficient. 
