54 DICTIONARY “OF BIRDS. 
foreign to any question with which a naturalist, as such, ought to deal— 
though that herein he was only following the example of one of his 
opponents, who had constantly treated the subject in like manner, is to 
be allowed. This did not hinder Swainson, who had succeeded in 
getting the ornithological portion of the first zoological work ever pub- 
lished at the expense of the British Government (namely, the Fauna 
Boreali-Americana) executed in accordance with his own opinions, from 
maintaining them more strongly than ever in several of the volumes treat- 
ing of Natural History which he contributed to the Cabinet Cyclopedia— 
among others that from which we have just given some extracts—and in 
what may be deemed the culmination in England of the Quinary System, 
the volume of the ‘ Naturalist’s Library” on The Natural Arrangement 
and History of Flycatchers (1838), an unhappy performance mentioned in 
the body of the present work (p. 274, note). This seems to have been 
his last attempt ; for, two years later, his Bibliography of Zoology shews 
little trace of his favourite theory, though nothing he had uttered in its 
support was retracted. Appearing almost simultaneously with that 
work, an article by Strickland (Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 2, iv. pp. 219-226), 
entitled Observations upon the Affinities and Analogies of Organized Beings, 
administered to the theory a shock from which it never recovered, 
though attempts were now and then made by its adherents to revive it ; 
and, even ten years or more later, Kaup, one of the few foreign orni- 
thologists who had embraced Quinary principles, was by mistaken kind- 
ness allowed to publish Monographs of the Birds-of-Prey (Jardine’s Contr. 
Orn. 1849, pp. 68-75, 96-121 ; 1850, pp. 51-80; 1851, pp. 119-130 ; 
1852, pp. 103-1225 and Trans. Zool. Soc. iv. pp. 201-260), in which its 
absurdity reached the climax. 
The mischief caused by this theory of a Quinary System was very 
great, but was chiefly confined to Britain, for (as already stated) the 
extraordinary views of its adherents found little favour on the continent 
of Europe. The purely artificial character of the System of Linneus 
and his successors had been perceived, and men were at a loss to find a 
substitute for it. The new doctrine, loudly proclaiming the discovery of 
a “Natural” System, led away many from the steady practice which 
should have followed the teaching of Cuvier (though he in Ornithology 
had not been able to act up to the principles he had laid down) and from 
the extended study of Comparative Anatomy. Moreover, it veiled the 
honest attempts that were making both in France and Germany to find 
real grounds for establishing an improved state of things, and conse- 
quently the labours of De Blainville, Etienne Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, 
and L’Herminier, of Merrem, Johannes Miiller and Nitzsch—to say 
nothing of others—were almost wholly unknown on this side of the 
Channel, and even the value of the investigations of British ornithotom- 
ists of high merit, such as Macartney and Macgillivray, was almost 
completely overlooked. True it is that there were not wanting other 
men in these islands whose common sense refused to accept the meta- 
phorical doctrine and the mystical jargon of the Quinarians, but so 
strenuously and persistently had the latter asserted their infallibility, 
and so vigorously had they assailed any who ventured to doubt it, that 
