SYSTEMS IX GENERAL. 133 



Systema Natures may have cramped the energies, and 

 stifled the investigations, of those who might otherwise 

 have struck out new paths of enquiry, this deference to 

 Linnaeus has prevented our shelves from being burdened, 

 and our attention distracted, by the innumerable artificial 

 systems which have inundated the Continent, and which, 

 it is to be feared, will continue to impede the advance 

 of true science, so long as such inventions are looked 

 upon as authorities, or are quoted as synonymes. 



(185.) The history and exposition of zoological 

 systems must not be confounded with the history of the 

 science, the latter exhibiting the progress of discovery, 

 while the former is properly confined to the arrangement 

 of these discoveries. We feel embarrassed, however, at 

 the difficulty of selection : for, independently of those 

 systems which embrace the whole animal kingdom, 

 there are numerous others which relate only to parti- 

 cular classes, each of which (like those which have gone 

 before, and have passed into oblivion) has, at this 

 time, its admirers and its advocates. These also will 

 "have their day," and endure for a season, until the natural 

 classification shall be developed. M. Lesson has been 

 at some pains to perpetuate the memory of no less than 

 fourteen systems of ornithology, nearly all of which have 

 been proposed by eminent naturalists, and he has added 

 the projet of his own, written in 1828, which is, never- 

 theless, very different from another, which he published 

 two years after. Every year, in short, increases the 

 number of these systems ; and in ornithology alone we 

 could almost double the above number. Entomology 

 has been a fruitful mother of systems ; although, in con- 

 chology, few attempts have been made to set aside the 

 classification of Lamarck. Were we, however, to ven- 

 ture upon a general specification of all these systems, 

 we should weary the reader with interminable columns 

 of names, and occupy space which might be more pro- 

 fitably filled. On the other hand, to omit all details 

 on the systematic views of such.men as Aristotle, Lin- 

 naeus, Cuvier, llliger, Latreille, and Lamarck, whose 

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