70 MEMOIR OF LINN^US. 



superficially known to be trusted as a secure ground- 

 work for geological speculation. 



Viewed as a Zoologist, Linnaeus was the first 

 that gave a picture of the animal kingdom, em- 

 bracing the whole range of beings that compose it. 

 His classifications are ingenious, and chiefly founded 

 on the organs of mastication, digestion, and lacta- 

 tion ; in the form of the wings in birds ; on the 

 absence or presence of elytra in insects. Nobody 

 before him had succeeded so well in drawing the 

 line of demarcation between animals and vege- 

 tables ; no author had hitherto known how to em- 

 ploy synoptical terms with so much brevity and 

 precision. In creating a language for the Natural 

 Sciences, he seemed to have prescribed boundaries 

 which human ignorance could not pass, and to have 

 fixed his definitions beyond the risk of miscon- 

 ception. 



Some writers have attempted to compare Lin- 

 naeus with Aristotle and Buffon ; others have ho- 

 noured him with the title of the Northern Pliny 

 and the second Dioscorides. Those parallels, how- 

 ever, want analogy. To measure Linnaeus with 

 other Naturalists, is to contrast Scott and Voltaire 

 with other poets: these men, by the prodigious 

 extent and variety of their works, stand aloof from 

 all comparison. It may be possible to find an equal 

 to Linnaeus as a botanist or a zoologist, or even to 

 surpass him as a mineralogist ; but where is one to 



