CLASSIFICATION. ta 
upon them, disclosing their admirable beauty, their strange 
peculiarities, and unexampled properties, all calculated to 
astonish mankind with yet another work flowing from the 
stupendous design of the universe. As if appalled by the 
difficulty of the task, by the nicety of investigation, by the 
obscurities hovering over their theme, naturalists seem, with 
almost common consent, to have shrunk from it; for the 
most part merely skirting the boundaries—seldom advanc- 
ing further, with few exceptions, than simply specifying such 
external characters as are most obvious to the view, and 
often content with hasty inspection of some mutilated or 
depauperated specimen. Thence much was left undone, and, 
till recent years, a great preponderance of results deduced 
from such subjects as were never seen alive, in a perfect 
state, or amidst their native element.” And again, “To bring 
the vast multitude the nearer human comprehension, we en- 
deavour to concentrate certain portions within a narrower 
circle by such subdivisions as to our faculties include those 
individuals allied by external or internal form and habits.” 
In systematic arrangements external resemblance was long 
too much regarded. In conchology, similarity of the shells 
was chiefly attended, while the inhabitants of the shells 
were greatly overlooked. So also in Zoophytes, by many 
