MIXED SYSTEMS. 197 



much time in becoming acquainted with a super- 

 ficial classification, as would have sufficed for the 

 acquirement of a sound one. 



(134.) The glaring violations of nature which 

 result from a strictly artificial system, have been 

 felt so forcibly by nearly all the best systematic 

 writers, that they have endeavoured to unite facility 

 of research with some attention to the order of 

 nature ; hence the origin of mixed systems, such 

 as that of the Regne Animal of Cuvier, and the 

 Genera Insectorum of Latreille. Arrangements of 

 this description have been, and still are, highly 

 useful; inasmuch as they bring together the scat- 

 tered fragments of the natural series, disjointed and 

 severed by artificial methods of arrangement. Yet 

 they are not so useful to the searcher after species, 

 because a wider latitude is given to the definitions ; 

 nor can they be considered as built upon philosophic 

 principles, for they commence upon no universal 

 and acknowledged truths of natural classification. 

 They frequently bring together natural groups ; but 

 after proceeding awhile in the evident order of 

 nature, they suddenly stop, and enter upon another 

 portion of their subject, as if it had no connection 

 whatever with that which they had just left. With 

 this they go on in some regularity ; but soon another 

 interruption is apparent, another gap is to be leaped, 

 and another series is begun upon, as if it had no- 

 thing to do with the last. These systems, which ex- 

 hibit nature, not as a whole, but as pieces, may be 

 compared to fragments of a chain, each composed 

 of an unequal number of links, which as far as they 

 extend are perfect, but whose two extremities show 

 o 3 



