ANIMALS. 



199 



animals, it is natural for ignorance to lie down 

 in hopeless uncertainty, and to declare what 

 requires labour to particularize to be utterly 

 inscrutable. It is otherwise, however, with the 

 active and searching mind ; no way intimi- 

 dated with the immense variety, it begins the 

 tusk of numbering, grouping, and classing, all 

 the various kinds that fall within its notice ; 

 finds every day new relations between the 

 several parts of the creation ; acquires the 

 art of considering several at a time under one 

 point of view; and, at last, begins to find that 

 the variety is neither so great nor so inscru- 

 table as was at first imagined. As in a clear 

 night, the number of the stars seems infinite; 

 yet, if we sedulously attend to each in its place, 

 and regularly class them, they will soon be 

 found to diminish, and come within a very 

 scanty computation. 



Method is one of the principal helps in na- 

 tural history, and without it very little pro- 

 gress can be made in this science. It is by 

 t'rnt alone we can hope to dissipate the glare, 

 if I may so express it, which arises from a 

 multiplicity of objects at once presenting them- 

 selves to the view. It is method that fixes the 

 attention to one point, and leads it, by slow 

 and certain degrees, to leave no part of na- 

 ture unobserved. 



All naturalists, therefore, have been very 

 careful in adopting some method of classing 

 or grouping the several parts of nature; and 

 some have written books of natural history 

 with no other view. These methodical divi- 

 sions some have treated with contempt," not 

 considering that books, in general, are writ- 

 ten with opposite views ; some to be read, 

 and some only to be occasionly consulted. 

 The methodists in natural history, seem to be 

 content with the latter advantage ; and have 

 sacrificed to order alone, all the delights of 

 the subject, all the arts of heightening, awake- 

 ning, or continuing curiosity. But they cer- 

 tainly have the same use in science, that a 

 dictionary has in language; but with this dif- 

 ference, that in a dictionary we proceed from 

 the name to the definition; in a system of na- 

 tural history, we proceed from the definition 

 to find out the thing. Without the aid of sys- 

 tem, nature must still have lain undistinguish- 



' Mr. Buffon in his Introduction, &c. 



ed, like furniture in a lumber-room : every 

 thing we wish for is there indeed, but we 

 know not where to find it. If, for instance, 

 in a morning excursion, I find a plant, or an 

 insect, the name of which I desire to learn ; 

 or, perhaps, am curious to know whether al- 

 ready known; in this inquiry I can expect 

 information only from one of these systems, 

 which being couched in a methodical form, 

 quickly directs me to what I seek for. Thus 

 we will suppose that our inquirer has met 

 with a spider, and that he has never seen such 

 an insect before. He is taught by the writer 

 of a system 1 ' to examine whether it has wings, 

 and he finds it has none. He, therefore, is to 

 look for it among the wingless insects, or the 

 Aptera. as Linna3us calls them: he then is to 

 sec whether the head and breast make one 

 part of the body, or are disunited ; he finds 

 they make one : he is then to reckon the num- 

 ber of feet and eyes, and he finds that it has 

 eight of each. The insect, therefore, must be 

 either a scorpion or a spider; but he lastly 

 examines its feelers, which he finds clavated, 

 or clubbed ; and, by all these marks, he at 

 last discovers it to be a spider. Of spiders, 

 there are forty-seven sorts; and, by reading 

 the description of each, the inquirer will learn 

 the name of that which he desires to know. 

 With the name of the insect, he is also direct- 

 ed to those authors that have giveri any ac- 

 count of it, and the page where that account 

 is to be found ; by this means he may know 

 at once what has been said of that animal by 

 others, and what there is of novelty in the re- 

 sult of his own researches. 



From hence it will appear how useful those 

 systems in natural history are to the inquirer; 

 but, having given them all their merit, it would 

 be wrong not to observe, that they have, in 

 general, been very much abused. Their au- 

 thors, in general, seem to think that they are 

 improvers of natural history, when in reality 

 they are but guides ; they seem to boast that 

 they are adding to our knowledge, while they 

 are only arranging it. These authors, also, 

 seem to think that the reading of their works 

 and systems is the best method to attain a 

 knowledge of nature ; but setting aside the 

 impossibility of getting through whole volumes 



a Linnzeus. 



