88 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



theories, and his fossil investigations, that will 

 perpetuate his name so long as those sciences are 

 cultivated : and they will be mentioned with admir- 

 ation, when the Regne Animal, for all purposes of 

 philosophic or natural arrangement, will serve only, 

 like the Systema Naturce, to mark the period of a 

 bygone era. It is with deep regret that the Chris- 

 tian philosopher traces another peculiarity in this 

 school ; which applies, more or less, to the greatest 

 number of the works it has produced. In perusing 

 the discoveries they contain, brilliant and elaborate 

 though they be, we look in vain for that pure spirit 

 of religious belief which breathes in the writings of 

 the gentle Ray, or those bursts of lofty praise and 

 enthusiastic admiration of Nature's God which 

 break forth from the great Linneeus, and which ir- 

 radiate all that he ever wrote. A cold, ill-concealed 

 spirit of materialism, or an open and daring avowal 

 of wild theories, "not more Impious than they are 

 absurd, attest, too unequivocally, the infidelity that 

 attaches to some of the greatest names in modern 

 zoology which France, or indeed any other country, 

 has produced. 



(38.) The era now before us, although of short 

 duration, includes a host of learned, accurate, and ac- 

 complished zoologists; most of whom are happily still 

 living, and still investigating. England may claim 

 the merit of first originating this analectic mode of 

 investigating nature ; for the celebrated work of our 

 pious and venerable countryman, Mr. Kirby *, was 



* W. Kirby. Monographia Apum Angliae. Ipswich, 1802. 

 2 vols. 8vo. 



