LINNAEUS. 509 



look back from our present vantage ground and magnify its 

 defects by a comparison with modern classifications : we are 

 in candour to place ourselves behind its author, and looking 

 forward, say how far his efforts have been useful or quicken- 

 ing.* Standing thus, we trust to offend none of his admirers 

 when we admit that there is nothing in its principle of a 

 novel character : the soft mollusca were previously recognized 

 and better assorted by Charlton ; and every one of the sec- 

 tions, and, if we mistake not, of the genera also, of the 

 shelled tribes had been already recognized. It labours un- 

 der the censure of having too small regard to the animal, a 

 censure in some degree just, for assuredly more was known 

 of these than the definitions of the "Systema" would lead 

 us to suppose ; and it had still less regard to the position of 

 the groups in reference to their organical affinities. -j- It often 

 associates species of dissimilar habits ; and species are found 

 in almost every genus at variance with the character of this, 

 and where consequently the student ought not to have sought 

 for them. The superiority of it lies in its simplicity ; in the 

 regulated subordination of all its parts ; in the admirable 

 sagacity with which the families or genera are limited ; in the 

 assumption of more stable characters for these, and for the 

 clear distinct manner in which they are applied ; in the suit- 

 ableness of its nomenclature ; in the invention of trivial 

 names which gave a facility in writing hitherto unknown, 

 and was a welcome relief to the memory ; in the conciseness 

 of the specific characters and the skill with which those cha- 

 racters were chosen ;J in the regular indication of the sta- 

 tions which the species occupy on the globe; and in the 

 beauty of the more extended descriptions, and the peculiar 

 felicity of language in which the thoughts suggested by any 

 remarkable structure in the species under review are con- 

 veyed to us.§ That merits of this kind should secure him 



* The first edition of the Systema Naturne was published in 1735, hut 

 1758 is properly the year which gave birth to his conchological system, when 

 the 10th edition was published. It was perfected in 1766. 



f See some good remarks by Macleay on this subject in the Hor. Entom. 

 part ii. p. 242, &c. — Mr. Gray has acutely remarked that Linnfeus "referred 

 all the animals inhabiting shells to five different genera, viz. Limax, Ascidia, 

 Anomia, Clio, and Sepia," — each of which is now the type of the modern 

 classes of the mollusca, — the Limax of Gasteropoda — the Ascidia of Con- 

 cliifera — the Anomia of Brachiopoda — the Clio of Pteropoda — and the Sepia 

 of the Cephalopoda.— Syn. Brit. Mus. 50, edit. 1842. 



X See Bosc, Coquilles, Introd. i. 30; Cuv. Hist, des Sc. Nat. iii. 24, 25. 



§ The definitions of the orders Mollusca and Testacea might be quoted 

 in illustration of this remark : — " Mollusca nuda, brachiata, vagantui plera- 

 que per maria, coelo resplendentia, tanquam totidem lucernis tenebricosum 

 illuminant abyssum phosphorea, ut quod est inferius, sit tanquam superius." 



