88 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
theories, and his fossil imvestigations, that will 
perpetuate his name so long as those sciences are 
cultivated : and they will be mentioned with admir- 
ation, when the Régne Animal, for all purposes of 
philosophic or natural arrangement, wili serve only, 
like the Systema Nature, to mark the period of a 
bygone era. It is with deep regret that the Chris- 
tian philosopher traces another peculiarity in this 
school; which applies, more or less, to the greatest 
number of the works it has produced. In perusing 
the discoveries they contain, brilliant and elaborate 
though they be, we look in vain for that pure spirit 
of religious belief which breathes in the writings of 
the gentle Ray, or those bursts of lofty praise and 
enthusiastic admiration of Nature’s God which 
break forth from the great Linneus, and which ir- 
radiate all that he ever wrote. A cold, ill-concealed 
spirit of materialism, or an open and daring avowal 
of wild theories, not more impious than they are 
absurd, attest, too unequivocally, the infidelity that 
attaches to some of the greatest names in modern 
zoology which France, or indeed any other country, 
has produced. 
(38.) The era now before us, although of short 
duration, includes a host of learned, accurate, and ac- 
complished zoologists; most of whom are happily still 
living, and still investigating. England may claim 
the merit of first originating this analectic mode of 
investigating nature ; for the celebrated work of our 
pious and venerable countryman, Mr. Kirby*, was 

* W. Kirby. Monographia Apum Anglie. Ipswich, 1802. 
2 vols. 8vo. 
. 
AY, 

