440 HISlOKY OK 



disunited ; he finds tbey make one : he is then to reekon the 

 number of feet and eyes, and he finds that it has eiglit of each. 

 The insect, therefore, must be either a scorpion or a spider ; 

 but he lastly examines its feelers, which he finds clavated, or 

 clubbed : and, by all these marks, he at last discovers it to be 

 a spider. Of spiders there are forty seven sorts ; and, by reading 

 the description of each, the inquirer will learn the name of that 

 which he desires to know. With the name of the insect, he is 

 also directed to those authors that have given any account of it, 

 and the page where that account is to be found ; by this means 

 he may know at once what has been said of that animal by 

 others, and what there is of novelty in the result of his own re- 

 searches. 



From hence it will appear how useful those systems in natu- 

 ral history are to the inquirer; but, having given them all their 

 merit, it would be wrong not to observe, that tbey have, in ge- 

 neral, been very much abused. Their authors, in general, seem 

 to think that they are improvers of natural history, when in 

 reality they are but guides ; they seem to boast that they are 

 adding to our knowledge, while they are only arranging it. 

 These authors, also, seem to think that the reading of their 

 works and systems is the best method to attain a knowledge of 

 nature ; but setting aside the impossibility of getting through 

 whole volumes of a dry long catalogue, the multiplicity of whose 

 contents is too great for even the strongest memory, such works 

 rather tell us the names than the history of the creature we de- 

 sire to inquire after. Jn these dreary pages, every insect or 

 plant, that has a name, makes as distinguished a figure as the 

 most wonderful, or the most useful. The true end of studying 

 nature is to make a just selection, to find those parts of it that 

 most conduce to our pleasure or convenience, and to leave the 

 rest in neglect. But these systems, employing the same degree 

 of attention upon all, give us no opportunities of knowing which 

 most deserves attention ; and he who has made his knowledge 

 from such systems only, has his memory crowded with a number 

 of trifling or minute particulars, which it should be his busine>s 

 and his labour to forget. These books, as was said befoi'e, are 

 useful to be consulted, but they are very unnecessary to be read ; 

 no inquirer into nature should be without one of them; and, 

 wi til out any doubt, Linnaeus deserves the preference. 



