176 REPORT — 1844. 



tean process, having already treated of it elsewhere (' Ann. Nat. Hist.' vol. vi. 

 p. 192). With ail its faults the 'Classification of Birds' is a very useful 

 elementary work, containing numerous details of structural characters, and 

 many just observations on the affinities of particular groups. A large num- 

 ber of new genera are here defined, although many which Mr. Swainson 

 considered to be new had been anticipated by continental authors, with 

 whose writings he was unacquainted. 



Although the quinary theory, properly so called, has made but little pro- 

 gress beyond the British Islands, yet there is a school of zoologists in Germany 

 whose doctrines are of a very similar character. The most eminent of these 

 authors is Oken, who has explained his ideas on classification in several of his 

 detached works, as well as in that valuable periodical the ' Isis,' and who 

 communicated an outline of his theory to the Scientific Meeting at Pisa in 

 1839. We find in his system the same arbitrary assumption of premises, the 

 same far-fetched and visionary notions of analogy, and the same Procrustean 

 mode of applying them to facts, which distinguish the writings of Swainson. 

 He professes to deduce as a conclusion, what is in fact the a priori assump- 

 tion on which his whole theory is based, — that the animal kingdom is analo- 

 gous to the anatomy of man, that is to say, that each of the organs which, when 

 combined in due proportion, constitute the human body, are developed in a 

 predominant degree in the several classes of animals, which represent those 

 organs respectively. This doctrine is far too fanciful to stand the test of 

 common sense, but it is certainly very ingenious, and we may admit that se 

 non e vero e ben trovato. The subkingdom Radiata he considers to represent 

 the egg, Mollusca the sexual organs, Articulata the viscera, and Vertebrata 

 the essentially animal, or motive organs. The subdivisions of these groups 

 represent not only individual anatomical organs, but also each other, in a 

 mode somewhat like that asserted by Mr. Swainson, but even more complex 

 and ingenious, and Avhich 1 have not space to develope*. 



The work which most nearly represents, in Germany, the quinarian school, 

 is the ' Classification der Siiugthiere und Vogel' of Kaup, 1844. This au- 

 thor, like Oken, compares the Animal Kingdom to the human anatomy, but 

 he extends the analogy of the "five senses" over every part of the system, 

 (except his sub-kingdoms, which are three) so as to form a uniformly quinary 

 arrangement. Thus though Kaup agrees with Swainson in adopting the 

 nxxTahev Jive, these authors are guided by diflferent principles of analogy, the 

 former looking to the development of the organs of sense, and the latter to 

 points of external structure connected with habits. Hence these two quinary 

 arrangements are very far from being coincident ; Swainson for instance 

 makes the Raptores one of his primary orders, while Kaup makes them a sub- 

 division of his Water-birds ! Again, Swainson makes Corvus the essential 

 type of all birds, while Kaup gives the same dignified position to Hirundo. I 

 need only add that Kaup's arrangement, like all a priori systems, is replete 

 with conjectures and fallacies. 



The fundamental error which appears to pervade these and many similar 

 modes of classification, is the assumption of a regidarity and, as it were, 



* The author having assumed not only tliat the class Mammalia represents the organs of 

 sense, but that the genera of each family represent tlie individual senses, and these latter 

 being commonly (though not correctly) enumerated as five, it results that, as far as the 

 Mammalia are concerned, Oken's system is, like Svrainson's, a quinary one. This coinci- 

 dence of number is, however, proved to be arbitrary, and not real, by the fact that these two 

 authors, who seem to have been wholly unacquainted with each other's writings, have in no 

 one instance adopted the same subdivisions for their corresponding groups. 



