4345 Mr. W. S. MacLeay on the Dying Struggle 



the most perfect indifFerence to me, whether he advocates the 

 binary, the quinary, or the centenary system. I write not, and 

 1 liave never written, but to amuse myself. I have never de- 

 graded natural history into book-making, nor considered the 

 science as a mode of making money by puffing. If I had, the 

 Horce Entomologiccc, the principal part of the copies of which 

 was burnt in the liookseller's hands, with his house, almost 

 immediately after the publication, would long ago have been 

 reprinted. My work, therefore, has remained in few hands; 

 and if it has attained public notice, it is certainly not owing to 

 any extraordinary trouble having been taken by its author for 

 that purpose. I cannot indeed be blind to the changes it has 

 effected in the English school of zoology. These are evident 

 on the slightest comparison of the zoological works published 

 in England previous and subsequent to 1822. But I can 

 assure Dr. Fleming 1 never puffed the work : I have neither 

 unblushingly reviewed it, nor attempted to burnish it brighter 

 by detracting from the just merits of other works. And, in 

 short, although repeatedly called upon by my bookseller, as 

 well as by eminent naturalists, to republish, I have left it to 

 its fate on the strength of some 80 or 100 copies, which I be- 

 lieve are all that exist, in the hands of naturalists. This con- 

 duct, however, which in a great measure has resulted from the 

 irksomeness of going twice over the same ground, I now per- 

 ceive to be attended with the great inconvenience, that it 

 allows any malicious or dishonest person to misquote me as he 

 pleases; for few have the means of detectiiig the crime. To 

 those who have seen my work, I appeal whether the author of 

 this article in the Quarterly has not written in malice. This 

 is evident from his mode of quoting; from his disgracefully 

 pirating some of my observations and making them jiass tor 

 his own; and, lastly, from the obvious desire he has to distin- 

 guish between MM. Lamarck and Macleay, by the former 

 being the " Author" of the system of Progressive Devclopcment^ 

 and the latter only the "Advocate" of the system of Circular 

 Affinities. While on this head, I must remind him, that not- 

 witiistanding his once supposed " discovery," the minister of 

 Flisk is himself only the advocate of the Dichotomous System ; 

 with this difference indeed, that when every other person has 

 taken it up, tried it, and spurned it, he alone remains to ad- 

 mire the beauties of this stale mode of division. Indeed, Dr. 

 Fleming now says, " As the dichotomous method is the ex- 

 hibition of a process of thought universally practised by the 

 human mind, we may well be surprised that any other mode of 

 ai'rangement for establishing a distinction among species ever 

 usurped its place. We" (i. e. Dr. Fleming) " disclaim all 



