4 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



animals. It has been the misfortune of those who 

 have written — in some respects ably — upon the 

 rise and progress of zoology, that this distinction 

 has either not been perceived, or has been entirely 

 set aside. Hence it has resulted that praise and 

 blame have been frequently misapplied; while 

 discoveries of the highest interest have been quite 

 overlooked in the fancied importance attached to 

 the maker of a system, or to the industry of a 

 nomenclator. Without, at present, entering further 

 into these essential differences between the labours 

 of naturalists, we must bear in mind that all true 

 knowledge of the laws of natural combination takes 

 its rise from minute analysis ; and that the value of 

 a system is to be judged of according to the degree 

 with which it arranges in harmonious order, all 

 the various and infinitely diversified facts resulting 

 from analysis. Of artificial systems there may be 

 no end, because the materials of which they are 

 composed show a diversity of relations : each system 

 may differ from the other, yet each may have some- 

 thing to recommend it. But with the materials 

 employed for their construction the case is quite 

 different : the analysis of a species, if correctly made, 

 remains for ever, unchangeable and unchanged : it 

 is permanent ; it cannot be gainsaid, nor does it 

 perish with the system into which it may be incor- 

 porated. The system may be overthrown, yet the 

 analysis remains. True it is that minute research is 

 of more easy accomplishment than the power of ge- 

 neralising : the one requires only a simple accuracy 

 of observation, the other an enlarged and compre- 

 hensive judgment. But, when once a system, like that 



