596 Observations on the 



position, may swell out or contract its circumference. To place 

 then an implicit, and all confiding reliance upon the perfection of 

 any system, that in its very nature must be thus changeable, thus 

 arbitrary, — to assert its infallibility, — to resist all change in its 

 form, all modifications to its meaning, — would argue a presumption 

 almost as great as to afiSrm, that man can limit the operations of 

 nature, — that he can bend her to his views, and enclose her within 

 his cobweb systems ; — or that his powers of vision, purblind and 

 contracted as they are, can trace out, nay has already traced out, 

 the interminable windings of those paths, where we are told em- 

 phatically " the ways are past finding out." 



But though nature no where exhibits an absolute division be- 

 tween her various groups, she yet displays sufficiently distinctive 

 characters to enable us to arrange them into conterminous assem- 

 blages, and to retain each assemblage at least in idea separate from 

 the rest. It is not however at the point of junction between it 

 and its adjoining groups, that I look for the distinctive character. 

 There, as M. Temminck justly observes, it is not to be found. It 

 is at that central point which is most remote from the ideal point 

 of junction on each side, and where the characteristick peculiarities 

 of the groups, gradually unfolding themselves, appear in their full 

 developement ; it is at that spot, in short, where the typical cha- 

 racter is most conspicuous, that I fix my exclusive attention. Upon 

 these typical eminences I plant those banners of distinction round 

 which corresponding species may congregate as they more or less 

 approach the types of each. In my pursuit of nature, I am accus- 

 tomed to look upon the great series in which her productions insen- 

 sibly pass into each other, with similar feelings to those with 

 which I contemplate some of those beautiful pieces of natural 

 scenery, where the grounds swell out in a diversified interchange 

 of valley and elevation. Here although I can detect no breach in 

 that undulating outline over which the eye delights to glide with- 

 out interruption, I can still give a separate existence in idea to 

 every elevation before me, and assign it a separate name. It is 

 upon the points of eminence, in each, that I fix my attention, and 

 it is these points I compare together, regardless, in my divisions, of 

 the lower grounds which imperceptibly meet at the base. Thus 

 also it is that I fix upon the typical eminences that rise most con- 



