Notices respecting New Books. 373 



which he has ignovantly confounded with that system, so as to induce 

 the reader who is previously unacquainted with the subject, to con- 

 clude that Mr. Rennie's representations must needs be founded in 

 truth, when he would have had nothing but Mr. Rennie's assertions 

 to support that conclusion, had an ingenuous plan been pursued. 



In the most false and unfounded manner he confounds the athe- 

 istical doctrine of appetencies, broached by Darwin, Lamarck, and 

 Robinet, with the Macleayan doctrine of the progression in affinity 

 from one group of animals to another, or the variation of form of 

 each species from that possessed by the preceding one, so that on 

 examining the entire group, a progressive change of character is ob- 

 servable, made up of the separate differences between each pair of 

 contiguous species. He asserts, with equal violation of the truth, 

 that the Quinary System, "while it professes to reject this strange 

 doctrine, at the same time adopts its very language in the most un- 

 equivocal manner." (p. xxxiii.) The truth being, that the doctrines 

 respecting natural distribution, held and advocated by Mr. Macleay, 

 or more properly speaking the phcenomena which he has discovered 

 in the progression of affinities, &c. in natural history, afford the most 

 triumphant refutation of the doctrine of appetencies; and that the 

 entire scope of some of Mr. Macleay's arguments is directed against 

 the very errors in zoology upon which that doctrine is founded. 



To support these misrepresentations, Mr. Rennie affirms, with equal 

 falsity, that Mr. Macleay has borrowed some of his general expres- 

 sions from Robinet, and, as he would insinuate, with the intention of 

 impartingthe sameideas as that writer, (p. xxxv.) He further expressly 

 asserts, with the same want of truth, that Mr. Macleay's " doctrine 

 of types" is " directly borrowed from the atheistic system of Robinet." 

 (p.xxxviii.) The Rev. W. Kirby, one of the authors of the celebrated 

 " Introduction to Entomology," a work which is distinguished by the 

 strain of rational piety and fervent devotion which it breathes, not 

 less than by its accurate scientific details, is charged (p. xxxviii. &c.) 

 with adopting (from Macleay) the atheism of Robinet ! The extrenie 

 effrontery of this, (as we are sure all our readers will unite with us in 

 regarding it,) becomes more strikingly apparent, when we reflect that 

 the venerable naturalist thus accused was, not long since, selected to 

 produce one of the works to be published in demonstration of the Divine 

 Attributes, as manifested in the Works of the Creation, in pursuance 

 of the bequest of the late Earl of Bridgwater. That this was a pe- 

 culiarly appropriate selection, all who are acquainted with the works 

 of Mr. Kirby, will concur in thinking ; and what renders the most 

 unfounded attack upon him in the publication before us the more ex- 

 traordinary, is that it should proceed from a Professor in a College, 

 two of the'Governors of which (the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 

 Bishop of London) concurred with the President of the Royal Society 

 (then Mr. Davies Gilbert) in the appointment of Mr. Kirby to the 

 above office*.— But to return to Mr. Rennie. Pursuing the same 

 strain, Messrs. Macleay and Kirby are actually both charged, in the 



• Sec Phil. Mng. and Annals, N.S. vol. ix. p. 202. 



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