198 Observations on the 



it is true, assign artificial limits to each department, and may cal- 

 culate with mathematical precision the months, the days, the 

 hours, of which it consists. He may even assign reasons for his 

 arbitrary divisions, and prove their probable approximation to the 

 regular interchanges of nature. — And this is precisely as far as 

 the Zoologist can go. — But this is all that is in his power. He 

 never can feel or assert that the character of one season is lost at 

 one particular moment, and gives place to the character of that 

 which succeeds. Here then we have four decided divisions, per- 

 fectly distinct in themselves, yet to which we are unable to affix 

 the limits. So it is with the groups of Zoology. They exhibit 

 separate divisions, distinguished by separate characters, but run- 

 ning into each other without any assignable limits : and any man 

 may draw his imaginary line across that " border country," that 

 *' land debateable," which stretches between the conterminous 

 regions, according as it suits his fancy, or his peculiar views, or as 

 it may accord with the greater or less preponderance of those 

 minour landmarks which serve as an inferiour mode of demarcation 

 in the absence of all natural boundaries. 



To make now a more particular application of the remarks I 

 have hitherto ventured to advance on the subject before us, it may 

 be in the first place set down as most consonant to those principles 

 of nomenclature which Linnaeus has left us, to designate every spe- 

 cies by a generick and specifick name alone, without any reference 

 to sectional or subgenerick divisions. These awkward references 

 would not only interfere with the simplicity that forms one of the 

 most striking beauties of the Linnean mode of nomenclature, but 

 would overturn that uniformity which equally distinguishes it. 

 The same observations extend to the unartistlike substitution, in 

 the place of genera, of divisions equivalent to them which are in- 

 troduced under the name of sections, or subgenera, or similar ap- 

 pellations. Sections may certainly be formed in genera, for the 

 purpose of making our reference to the species more easy, particu- 

 larly where the genus abounds in species, founded however on such 

 minour characters as are of no importance in pointing out the na- 

 tural habits of the birds; as for instance, in many extensive groups 

 of the Psittacida and the true Picus, where colour maybe resorted 

 to as an inferiour, but a useful, guide. But where in extensive 



