AWARD OF THE ROYAL MEDALS. 437 
be bestowed among the cultivators of natural history, 
the council deemed it expedient to look abroad for a 
fit subject, and to bestow it upon one whose Jabours 
in the minutiz of his science have been indeed in- 
teresting, but whose merits, in comparison to those of 
the first discoverer of the system of circular affinities, 
are much tle same as those which exist between a 
numberer of the stars, and the discoverer of the 
laws of their motion! Was there no member of the 
council present, at this most extraordinary adjudi- 
cation, sufficiently acquainted with the philosophy 
of natural history, or of those Baconian principles 
upon which it should be prosecuted, who protested 
against an award so signally unjust to native genius ? 
We have the pleasure of personally knowing the 
amiable and excellent professor at Geneva; and 
we are thoroughly convinced, that his surprise at 
receiving this medal, knowing and appreciating as he 
does, the splendid talents of our countryman, must 
have been fully as great as that experienced by the 
zoologists of England when first informed of the 
event. If the value of a scientific discovery is to be 
measured by the universality of its application, by 
its effect upon all existing systems, annihilating some, 
and breaking up all, by the promulgation of a new 
and universal law (the greatest of which zoology at 
present can boast), then does the discovery in 
question leave all others, save one*, at an immeasur- 
able distance. We presume not to criticise the de- 
* We allude to the discovery of the metamorphosis of the 
Cirripeda and of the Crustacea, by Thompson, before alluded 
to, p. 345. 
FF 3 
