34 INTRODUCTION. 



facts, and to invent a nomenclature at once effi- 

 cient and comprehensive. 



Since the time of that philosopher natural history 

 in all its branches has been cultivated with extreme 

 ardour. The writers of this period have been nu- 

 merous beyond those of any former epoch ; and as 

 anatomical investigation was successfully applied to 

 the study of zoology, while the objects known were 

 immensely increased, it was soon found that the 

 classifications of the great reformer of the science 

 were in many respects deficient, and that he had fre- 

 quently associated objects which have too little affi- 

 nity to be grouped together in the same class or 

 order. The Systema Naturae, in place of forming 

 a complete catalogue of all the objects of nature, 

 " became," to use the words of an accomplished 

 author, " a mere sketch of what was to be done 

 afterwards. Even more recent naturalists touched 

 with a timid hand upon the natural grouping of 

 the highest branches of the science, and it was 

 reserved for a mighty genius of our own time to 

 open the path to us, and to smooth the difficulties 

 of that path, by precisely determining the limits of 

 the great divisions, by exactly defining the lesser 

 groups, by placing them all according to the inva- 

 riable characters of their internal structure, and by 

 ridding them of the accumulations of synonymes 

 and absurdities which ignorance, want of method, 

 or fertility of imagination, had heaped upon them."'^ 

 This '' mighty genius," it is almost unnecessary to 

 add, was the illustrious Cuvier, who, although by 

 no means the only great, and possibly not even the 



* Mrs R. Lee's Memoirs of Baron Cuvier, p. 51. 



