Notices respecti7ig New Books. 375 



the views of natural arrangement of Mr. Macleay and his disciples, 

 so far as they have yet been enunciated ; noticing some differences 

 of opinion, on minor points, which exist among the naturalists of 

 this school. By this means we hope to convey a just idea of them to 

 the genera! reader j for we wish to enlist every reflecting mind inter- 

 ested in the study of nature, in the support of the " new views," 

 confident alike of the delight which the truths they unfold will convey 

 to every person of common intellectual powers, and of the increased 

 stability they will be found to give to the deductions of a sound natu- 

 ral theology, harmonizing most perfectly with the Christian Religion. 



For reasons which will be evident in the sequel, we begin with 

 Mr. Rennie's attack on the Quinary System. This commences in 

 p. xxxii. of his prefatory matter, and in the following page, under the 

 head "The Quinary System and Modern Doctrine of Types, Affinities, 

 and Analogies," he ostensibly begins the consideration of the subject, 

 Mr.W. S. Macleay's attempt to discover the natural sijstem he states to 

 have been " beyond all question, highly laudable," though, he con- 

 tinues, " 1 shall endeavour to show, after giving abrief outline [ofit], 

 it appears to be altogether a failure." Mr. R. then gives an extract 

 from a review published in the Zoological Journal, and four extracts 

 from Mr. W. S. Macleay's own works, for the purpose, apparently, 

 of supporting a representation which he makes at the outset, that the 

 "system recently proposed," to which he is about to advert, "on its 

 first announcement, put forth the high claim of being exclusively, — 

 if not the natural system, at least the rudiments thereof, or furnishing 

 the means for arriving at this, and, therefore, [of being] in accor- 

 dance with the plan of the Deity at the creation." 



Now with this representation of the character of the doctrine of the 

 circular succession of affinities and the parallelism of groups, (as we 

 shall for the present designate the system under examination, for the 

 particular number of the groups it discovers is merely a consequence 

 of its other principles,) we heartily concur. To maintain that the 

 arrangement discovered by Mr. Macleay is the entire system of nature, 

 — that it embraces the whole plan of the Deity at the creation, or 

 that errors may not exist in what Mr. Macleay or his followers may 

 have promulgated as the result of their observation of nature, would 

 be idle and absurd ; and we confidently aflSrm that such a view never 

 has been maintained either by Mr. Macleay or his disciples. 



But we also affirm that the system first propounded, as a system, 

 by Mr. Macleay, and discovered by him (however certain constituent 

 principles of it might have been previously discovered by others) is as 

 much '♦ the natural s.vstem " as the Copernican system of that assem- 

 blage of the heavenly bodies of which the planet we inhabit is one, 

 is "//le natural system". Everything that proceeds from the mind or 

 the hands of man, is, in the universal sense of the term, arfijicinl; 

 for what is produced by the exertion of the human mental faculties, 

 or the human corporeal organization, cannot be natural, cannot be, 

 ipso facto, what exists in nature. But when nature is observed by man, 

 and when man expresses in language or by visible signs, his conception 

 of what he has thus observed in nature, the logical or predicative 



system, 



