138 HISTORY OF 



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 also with the same assi- 

 duity ; and although the number of these is so 

 few as not to exceed two hundred, they have 

 darkened the subject with distinctions and divi- 

 sions, which only serve to puzzle and perplex. 

 All method is only useful in giving perspicuity 

 where the subject is either dark or copious : but 

 with regard to quadrupeds, the number is but 

 few ; many of them we are well acquainted with 

 by habit, and the rest may very readily be known 

 without any method. In treating of such, there- 

 fore, it would be useless to confound the reader 

 with a multiplicity of divisions ; as quadrupeds 

 are conspicuous enough to obtain the second rank 

 in nature, it becomes us to be acquainted with at 

 least the names of them all. However, as there 

 are naturalists who have gained a name from the 

 excellence of their methods in classing these ani- 

 mals, some readers may desire to have a know- 

 ledge of what "has been laboriously invented for 

 their instruction. I will just take leave, there- 

 fore, to mention the most applauded methods of 

 classing animals, as adopted by Ray, Klein, and 

 Linnaeus ; for it often happens, that the terms 

 which have been long used in a science, though 

 frivolous, become by prescription a part of the 

 science itself. 



Ray, after Aristotle, divides all animals into 

 two kinds ; those which have blood, and those 

 which are bloodless. In the last class he places 



