86 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY- 



a much nearer approach to that of nature than any 

 which had preceded them, because their groups are 

 founded upon general considerations. The orders 

 of Linnaeus were subdivided and remodelled, the 

 nature of the molluscous, radiated, and annulose 

 animals defined with great skill, and every part of 

 the animal kingdom was minutely analysed and 

 more correctly defined. The result of all this was 

 collected into the Regne Animal of the celebrated 

 Cuvier, which may be termed the Sy sterna Natures 

 of this era, and which certainly contains a greater 

 mass of zoological information than is to be found 

 in any modern work. It has, with justice, been 

 compared to a mine of information, rich both in the 

 discoveries of the author and of his cotemporaries. 

 " But the disposition and ability to make use of 

 this one, to give it the proper form and polish, is 

 not, it seems, a necessary concomitant to skill in 

 extracting it, or to the patience required before it 

 could have been collected for use. At least, it is 

 but too visible, and has been too often and too 

 justly remarked, that no person of such transcendent 

 talents and ingenuity ever made so little use of his 

 observations towards a natural arrangement as 

 M. Cuvier."* The amateurs of zoology, in this 

 country, ever prone to judge in extremes, after 

 overlooking the labours of this great man for nearly 



* Horse Entomologies, p. 326. And yet it has been 

 stated, in a public eloge pronounced in this country, that Cu- 

 vier eminently possessed these powers of " legitimate and 

 inductive generalisation" in arranging the animal series, in 

 which, as Mr. M'Leay truly observes, he was so notoriously 

 deficient. 



