ANIMALS. 269 



therefore is to look for it among the wingless insects, or the Apter?v, 

 as Linnaeus calls them : he then is to see whether the head and bi east 

 make one part of the body, or are disunited ; he finds they make one 

 ne is then to reckon the number of feet and eyes, and he finds that 

 it has eight of each. The insect, therefore, must be either a scor- 

 pion 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 directed to those authors that have given any account 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 result of his own researches. 



From hence, it will appear how useful these 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 authors, 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 of a dry long catalogue, the multiplicity of 

 whose contents is too great for even the strongest memory, such 

 works rather tell us the names than the history of the creature we 

 desire to inquire after. In these dreary pages, every insect, or plant, 

 that has a name, makes as distinguished a figure as the most wonder- 

 ful, or the most useful. The true end of studying nature is to make 

 a just selection, to find those parts of it that most conduce to our 

 pleasure or convenience, and to leave the rest in noglect. But these 

 systems, employing: the same degree of attention upon all, give us no 

 opportunities of knowing which most deserves attention ; and he who 

 has made his knowledge from such systems only, has his memory 

 crowded with a number of trifling, or minute particulars, which it 

 should be his business and his labour to forget. These books, as was 

 said before, are useful to be consulted, but they are very unnecessary 

 to be read ; no inquirer into nature should be without one of them ; 

 and, without any doubt, Linnaeus deserves the preference. 



One fault more, in almost all these systematic writers, and that which 

 leads me to the subject of the present chapter, is, that seeing the 

 necessity of methodical distribution in some parts of nature, they 

 have introduced it into all. Finding the utility of arranging plants, 

 birds, or insects, they have arranged quadrupeds aiso with the Same 

 assiduity ; and although the number of these is so few as not to ex- 

 ceed two hundred,* they have darkened the subject with distinctions 

 and divisions, which only serve to puzzle and perplex. All method 

 is only useful in giving perspicuity, where the subject is either dark 



* In Dr. Shaw's General Zoology, the number of quadrupeds, not including the ceta/*eoui 

 and seal tribes, aroint to five hundred and twelve, besides th'^ir varieties. 



