PRRFACE TO TIIK FIRST EDITION. XXIU 



altliougli I endeavoured, as far as possible, to preserve those of my pre- 

 decessors ; but the numerous subgenera I have established required these 

 denominations, for in things so various the memory is not satisfied with 

 numerical indications. I have selected them, either for an indication of 

 some character, or from the common names which I have latinized, or 

 finally, after the example of Linnaeus, from the mythological nomencla- 

 ture, which are generally agreeable to the ear, and which we are far from 

 having exhausted. 



In naming species, however, I would recommend the employment oi\ly of 

 the substantive of the genus, and the trivial name. The names of the 

 subgenera are designed as a mere relief to the memory, when we wish to 

 indicate these subdivisions in particular. Otherwise, as the subgenera, 

 already very numerous, will, in the end, become greatly multiplied, in 

 consequence of having substantives continually to retain, we shall be in 

 danger of losing the advantages of that binary nomenclature so happily 

 imagined by Linnajus. 



It is for the better preservation of it, that I have dismembered, as little 

 as possible, the genera of that illustrious reformer of science. When- 

 ever the subgenera in which I divide them were not to be translated to 

 different families, I have left them together under their former generic 

 appellation. This was not only due to the memory of Linneeus, but it 

 was necessary in order to preserve the tradition and mutual understand- 

 ing of the naturalists of different countries*. 



This habit, necessarily acquired in the study of natural history, of the 

 mental classification of a great number of ideas, is one of the advantages 

 of that science which is seldom observed, and wliich, when it shall have 

 been generally introduced into the system of common education, will become, 

 perhaps, the principal one. By it the student is exercised in that part of 

 logic which is termed method, just as he is by geometry in that of syllo- 

 gism, because natural history is the science which requires the most pre- 

 cise methods, as geometry is that which demands the most rigorous rea- 

 soning. Now this art of method, once well acquired, may be applied, 

 with infinite advantage, to studies the most foreign to natural history. 

 Every discussion implying a classification of facts, every inquiry which 

 demands a distribution of materials, is performed according to the same 

 laws; and the young man who had cultivated this science merely for 



* Here the author inserts a paije of matter containing an explanation of the 

 causes which induced liiin to direct the employment of several forms of type in the 

 body of the work, and also of the classes and other divisions which were to be indi- 

 cated by the varieties of the letter. " Thus," he concludes the paragraph, " will the 

 reader be able, at one glance, to distinguish the most important portions in every 

 page, and the order of arrangement of every idea, and thus will the printer have se- 

 conded tlie author in all those contrivances which his art is capable of supplying to 

 the faculty of the memory." — Eng. Ed. 



