RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 23 



in his Pinax, published in 1667, we find that the 

 next publication of any moment bears the name of 

 one of the great naturalists of this era, — Dr. Martin 

 Lister, secretary to the Royal Society (then but 

 recently instituted), and chief physician to queen 

 Anne. The first work of this father of conchology 

 makes known the spiders, the shells, and the fossil 

 echini, &c. of Great Britain ; all of which are not 

 only well described, but are accompanied by tabular 

 systematic arrangements, superior to any that had 

 yet been framed, and fully equal to those subse- 

 quently given by Ray. Lister, in fact, is unques- 

 tionably the inventor of system; for he not only 

 arranges the whole of the British araniae under 

 greater and lesser divisions, but draws up a short 

 and expressive specific character for each, which 

 precedes his subsequent and more general descrip- 

 tion. Had this remarkable man imposed upon each 

 species a single additional word, by which it could 

 have been at once distinguished, — had he, in short> 

 given but a generic name to his groups, and a 

 specific one to his species,-— he would have been the 

 first of nomenclators as he was of systematists ; and 

 the unbounded praise that has been so profusely 

 lavished upon Linnaeus for the simplicity of his 

 distinctions, would have been more justly merited 

 by Lister, inasmuch as the invention of precise sys- 

 tematic arrangement unquestionably belongs to the 

 latter. Nor is this the only point in which Lister, 

 so far as his researches extended, showed his su- 

 periority over the great Swede, who subsequently 

 monopolised the applause of mankind. Lister looked 

 to the habits and economy of these insects for the 

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