ADVANTAGES OF ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS. 195 



such writers as divide every group into two ; the one 

 having positive, the other negative characters. These, 

 indeed, are so simple, that the most illiterate can 

 understand them ; for we have only to see what an 

 animal has, and what it has not, to find it out and 

 determine its name. Such methods of arrangement, 

 as might have been expected, violate the series of 

 nature at almost every step; but this, as before 

 observed, is of no sort of consequence in a really 

 artificial system, where the primary object is to 

 arrange animals, as nearly as it is possible, on the 

 same plan as words are placed in a dictionary. 



(133.) The disadvantages, however, of all such 

 methods more than counterbalance the facilities 

 they appear to offer. In the first place, they must 

 necessarily disregard the order of nature, which it 

 is the chief object of this science to discover and to 

 unfold. As their perfection consists in their abso- 

 luteness, they must separate into widely different 

 groups, animals which are not only of the same 

 genus, but actually of the same species. For in- 

 stance, no arrangement of insects appears more 

 simple, and even in some respects more natural, than 

 that which divides them into such as have wings, and 

 such as have none. Yet if this plan is so rigorously 

 acted upon, as to render it a correct guide or index 

 to the nomenclature of insects, we must place the 

 female glowworm in one division, and the male in 

 the other ; the first being without wings, while the 

 latter has four, two of which form cases for the pro- 

 tection of the others. The sexes of several moths, 

 where the same singular differences are found, must, 

 o 2 



