RETROGRESSION. 



SWAINSON AND THE CIRCULAR CLASSIFICATION. 



WE have now considered the main features of the work 

 effected by Cuvier in zoology, and we have next to take a 

 glance at the retrograde and in all respects singular system 

 known as the Circular Classification. The original author 

 of this system was William Sharpe Macleay, a well-known 

 and able entomologist, and the first complete exposition of 

 his system is to be found in a very rare work entitled 

 'Horse Entomologies,' published in London in the year 

 1819. Though Macleay was the inventor the term may 

 be used advisedly without disparagement of his undoubted 

 talents and perfect good faith of the ' Circular System ' of 

 classification, Swainson, the well-known ornithologist, was 

 its principal expositor; and it is therefore most suitable 

 that we should consider this system in connection with 

 the latter rather than the former naturalist. In the first 

 place, then, let us take a glance at Swainson's life as told 

 by himself.* 



William Swainson was born in October 1789, his father 



* ' Cabinet Cyclopaedia : Biography of Zoologists,' pp. 338-352. 



