82 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



accurate, but masterly, yet, from not being referred 

 to any of the modern genera, or accompanied by 

 plates, they are, in numberless instances, perfectly 

 useless, from the impossibility of determining the 

 systematic characters of the animal described. This 

 is greatly to be lamented, for he is the only writer 

 on the zoology of South America who has recorded 

 the economy and habits of the animals he describes. 

 The entomological memoirs, collected into the vo- 

 lume of Fuessly *, are partly in the style of narrative 

 adopted by Reaumer, and partly systematic; but 

 both are interesting and instructive, and the figures 

 well executed. 



(36.) The narrative style of treating natural his- 

 tory, adopted by Buffon and his immediate followers, 

 however interesting and popular, was soon found to 

 be quite inconsistent with the study of nature as a 

 science; and even the most eminent of his own 

 countrymen, when the fever of admiration had 

 somewhat subsided, began to see the impossibility 

 of going on without a more orderly method of ar- 

 ranging their discoveries, and of communicating 

 their- knowledge : some, therefore, adopted the Lin- 

 naean or the Fabrician system, or invented one of 

 their own ; while others, of a higher order, perceived 

 that not only system was to be implicitly followed, 

 but that a much more complicated one than that of 

 Linnaeus was necessary. Hence arose a new school 

 of zoologists in France ; who not only embraced the 

 spirit of the Linnaean mode of arrangement, but 



* J. G. Fuessly. Archives de l'Hist. des Insectes. Win- 

 terthhour, 1794. 4 to. 



