170 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



range all animals according to their organisation, 

 certainly carries with it an imposing aspect of 

 authority, originating not so much in the high re- 

 putation of the author as a comparative anatomist, 

 but from the supposition conveyed by the title, that 

 it is based upon the internal organisation of the 

 animal kingdom; and that all the divisions are 

 formed with a primary regard to such consider- 

 ations. But what is the real fact ? Where one group 

 of animals has been dissected, and their internal 

 structure explained, there are twenty which are 

 denned only from their external appearance ; so that, 

 with the exception of occasional notes introduced as 

 subordinate characters, we find that by far the 

 largest proportion of the details of this system is 

 founded alone upon external form ; and that these 

 external characters are nearly as much insisted upon 

 in the JRegne Animal as in the Systema Natures, 

 Further than this, indeed, the comparison between 

 these admirable works cannot be carried, except that 

 each commenced a new era in that science which 

 they have so signally benefited. 



(113.) To external form, then, we must chiefly 

 resort, if we wish to make the productions of nature 

 intelligible to the generality of mankind. We have 

 seen that, in the case of man, nature has chosen ex- 

 ternal peculiarities to mark the distinction of differ- 

 ent races ; and it is notorious how universally she 

 has employed the same means to distinguish those 

 millions of individuals who people the earth ; so that, 

 by innumerable modifications of the same set of 

 features, we are able to recognise a countenance 

 with which we are familiar in a crowd of others, 



