288 Mr. Children's Abstract of the Characters of 



as they may be to us, they are altogether the offspring 

 of our own imaginings, from the comparatively rude at- 

 tempts of the earlier methodists, to the Regne Animal of 

 Cuvier, or the Horcc Entomologicce of W. S. Macleay. 

 They are human, not divine systems ; and however beau- 

 tifully they may illustrate the apparently mutual connec- 

 tions and gradations in structure or habit amongst the 

 countless multitude of beings that constitute the animal 

 world, we have only our own assumption that any such 

 gradations and connections really exist ; — an assumption, 

 however, far fi'om rash or presumptuous, but, on the 

 contrary, supported by the evident harmonies of nature. 

 It is not, therefore, against such systems that we would 

 object, but against their abuse ; against the wild attempt to 

 strain them beyond what their texture can bear ; to make 

 them, not the faithful guide and assistant to the student, 

 but the laboratory note-book of the Great Author of Na- 

 ture ! Such, at least, is the almost blasphemous trash, 

 published by a celebrated foreign naturalist, in an other- 

 wise admii'able work, — trash, of which it is difficult to 

 say, whether it most deserves our execration, or our con- 

 tempt ! Infinite power, trying experiments ! First making 

 a monkey, — and then a man ! ! What the greatest Na- 

 turalist of modern times has recently said of Fish, is ap- 

 plicable, mutatis mtitandis, to the whole of animated na- 

 ture. " Les Poissons forment une classe d'animaux dis- 

 tincte de toutes les autres, et destinee en totalite par sa 

 conformation a vivre, a se mouvoir, a exercer les actes 

 essentiels a sa nature dans I'element aqueux. C'est la 

 leur place dans la creation. lis y ont ete des leur origine; 

 Us y r ester ont jusqiHd la destruction de Vordre actuel des 

 choses, et ce rHest que par de vaines speculations vietaphy- 

 siques, ou imr des rapprochemens tres-supejficiels, que Ton a 

 voulu considcrer leur classe comme un develop>peme7it, un 

 perfectionnement^ wi annoblissement de celle des mollusques, 

 ou comme une premiere ebauche, comme un etat de fetus des 

 autres classes des vertebres." — Cuvier, Hist. Nat. des 

 Poissons. 4to. I. 401. 

 Had the author, against whom Cuvier's observations are 

 obviously directed, been a Scotchman, we might have 

 supposed he had stolen a hint for his precious hypothesis 

 from the playful lines of Burns : — 



" Her 'prentice han 

 She tried on man, 

 And then she made the lassies, O ! " 



Fam. 



