268 A HISTORY OF 



variety as is diffused around us, where shall we begin ! The numbet 

 of beings endued with life, as well as we, seems, at first view, infinite. 

 Not only the forest, the waters, the air teems with animals of various 

 kinds; but almost every vegetable, every leaf, has millions of minute 

 inhabitants, each of which fill up the circle of its allotted life, and 

 , some of which are found objects of the greatest curiosity. In this 

 seeming exuberance of animals, it is natural for ignorance to lie down 

 in hopeless uncertainty, and to declare what requires labour to par- 

 ticularize to be utterly inscrutable. It is otherwise, however, with 

 the active and searching mind ; no way intimidated with the immense 

 variety, it begins the task 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 con- 

 sidering several at a time under one point of view, and at last begins 

 to find that the variety is neither so great nor so inscrutable as was at 

 first imagined. As in a clear night, the number of the stars seems in- 

 finite ; yet, if we sedulously attend to each in his place, and regularly 

 class them, they will soon be found to diminish, and come within a 

 scanty computation. 



Method is one of the principal helps in natural history, and without 

 it very little progress can be made in this science. It is by that 

 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 nature 

 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 divisions some have treated with contempt,* not consider- 

 ing that books, in general, are written with opposite views ; some to 

 be read, and some only to be occasionally 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, awakening, or continuing curiosity. But they cer 

 tainly have the same use in science that a dictionary has in language : 

 but with this difference, that in a dictionary we proceed from the name 

 to the definition ; in a system of natural history, we proceed from the 

 definition to find out the thing. Without the aid of system, nature 

 must still have lain undistinguished, 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 

 1o know whether already known ; in this inquiry I can expect infor- 

 mation only from one of these systems, which, being couched in a 

 methodical form, quickly directs me to what I seek for. Tbns 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 Df a <sy*omt 

 to examine whether it has wings, and he finds that it has none fie 



* Mr. Button, in his Introduction, &c. ( Linnaeus 



