516 HISTORY OF CONCHOLOGY. 



that, from the very subsidiary station the animal was made to 

 occupy in this system, there was a fear attention should he 

 drawn from the object most worthy of it, we were seriously 

 told that the animal, even could it be procured, which was 

 doubtful, would never present those " permanent and obvious 

 points of distinction" indispensable in the application of a 

 system meant to be practical. Wherein does the animal 

 differ, it was asked in a tone of triumph, signifying that reply 

 was impossible, — " wherein does the animal differ from an 

 unshapen mass of lifeless matter when coiled up within its 

 shelly habitation ? And how are its natural shape and appen- 

 dages to be examined, but by the knife of an anatomist?"* 

 Were it proved, what indeed was most palpable, that species 

 of opposite habits and habitations were huddled together 

 under a common head, it was answered that to derive charac- 

 ters from such particulars was contrary to axiom and unphi- 

 losophical ; and if it were demonstrative that the class of 

 Testacea, as a whole, was constituted of heterogeneous dispa- 

 rates, — as for example when Pallas indicated the difference 

 between this class and the Serpula?, — what then ? Nature 

 gloried in variety and oppositions, and was herself system- 

 less,"!- as if it were possible to believe that He, who made 

 every thing in wisdom and order, had shook His creatures 

 from His hand, with the same wanton unordered profusion 

 that the poet has represented the jocund May, flinging the 

 flowerets from her teeming lap. Such were the futile rea- 

 sons by which this System was upheld, and so firm was its 

 despotism that, until within these twenty years, there was 

 little or no relaxation on its hold of public opinion ; and its 

 evil effects are too evident in the superficialness of the pro- 

 ductions which emanated from this school. 



Even in France theLinnaean system soon became little less 

 predominant under the leading of Bruguiere, but the regard 

 the French paid to it was of a less slavish character than it 



LinneV' Some Account of the Life of Sir C. Linne, p. 42. The Rev. Mr. 

 Burrow is equally imaginative in Lis language, and grandiloquent in his 

 prophetical judgment. — Elements, pref. vi. &c. 



* Da Costa, Elem. Conchology, 7 — 24 ; Lin. Trans, vii. p. 177 ; 

 Brown's Elements, p. 10. 



f " Nature does not seem to have observed any system, and an artificial 

 one will ever be attended with anomalies. Whatever method therefore most 

 readily leads to the subject under investigation, is certainly the best, and in 

 this case it is of small importance where that subject is placed, or how far it 

 is removed from others to which it seems to bear a general resemblance." — 

 Maton, in Pulteney's Life of Linnaeus, p. 238. — Sir J. E. Smith also allows 

 himself to talk of the " irregularities of Nature," as an apology for some 

 inconsistencies in the zoological works of Linnseus. — Tracts, p. 136. 



