202 Mr. W. S. MacLeay's Examination of 



longs I'espectively to the various schools of Naturalists, now 

 require to be informed that those of the present day make it 

 a rule to preserve the ancient groupes where they deem them 

 good, and only differ from their predecessors in showing how 

 these groupes may be subdivided. This, in fact, is the real 

 progress of Natural History ; for on looking back at the mode 

 for instance, in which Zoology has advanced, we find that 

 Aristotle's Genera were the Orders of Linnaeus, and that the 

 Genera of Linnaeus are the Families of the present day. And 

 not only the wofd genus, but even the word species, as you 

 yourself say, has become more confined in its signification. 

 To say that the word genius had originally any confined or de- 

 terminate sense given to it by Linnaeus, or that any particular 

 limits were assigned to it by him, beyond that perhaps of its 

 being his smallest known groupe of species, is sufficiently dis- 

 proved, not only by the impossibility of his making it to sig- 

 nify any thing else than a groupe, but also by the fact, that 

 the learned Swede was constantly, as his knowledge of indivi- 

 duals increased, subdividing his early genera into new ones. 

 But however this may be, I beg you may rest assured that 

 every person who goes on increasing his acquaintance with 

 the smaller natural groupes, whether they be called genera, or 

 subgenera, or any thing else, must know but too well that ar- 

 tificial systems aim at a different object from the natural sy- 

 stem. I should have fancied, indeed, that so much was implied 

 by the bare use of such terms as natural and artificial. 



An artificial system aims at facilitating the distinction and 

 nomenclature of species, and not at the knowledge of how 

 these species are connected together in the one great plan of 

 creation, which in fact is the natural system. An artificial 

 system, therefore, really aims at an object ; but the natural 

 system is itself the object aimed at by those, who truly know 

 the difference between the two, and how trivial and contemp- 

 tible the most perfect acquaintance with the one is in compa- 

 rison with the smallest glimpse of the other. But you state 

 that the natural system has an object, namely, " to abridge 

 the labour of reasoning!" If I know what is meant by the 

 Natural System, it is as I have already stated, the original plan 

 of the ci'eation ; and to say, therefore, that the object of the 

 natural system, or rather of the Deity who devised it, was to 

 abridge the labour of I'easoning, is beyond my comprehension, 

 and still less can I understand how it answers to the purpose 

 thus assigned to it. I suspect, indeed, the longer you study 

 it, the less you will find your labour abridged. At least such 

 is the recorded experience of men who have dealt as much in 

 the observation of facts as in abstract reasoning. 



Yon 



