528 HISTORY OF 



(hrovving several lislies that agree in many particulars into one 

 group, and thus uniting all into so many particular bodies, the 

 mind that was incapable of separately considering each, is ena- 

 bled to comprehend all, when thus offered in larger masses to its 

 consideration. 



Indeed, of all the beings in animated nature, fishes most de- 

 mand a systematical arrangement. Quadrupeds are but few, and 

 can be all known ; birds, from their seldom varying in their size, 

 can be very tolerably distinguished without system ; but among 

 fishes, which no size can discriminate, where the animal ten 

 inches, and the animal ten feet long, is entirely the same, there 

 must be some other criterion by which they are to be distin- 

 guished; something that gives precision to our ideas of the ani- 

 mal whose history we desire to know. 



Of the real history of iishes, very little is yet known ; but of 

 very many we have full and sufficient accounts, as to their ex- 

 ternal form. It would be unpardonable, therefore, in a history 

 of these animals, not to give the little we do know ; and, at least, 

 arrange our forces, though we cannot tell their destination. In 

 this art of arrangement, Artedi and Linnaeus have long been 

 conspicuous : they have both taken a view of the animal's form 

 in different lights ; and, from the ])arts which most struck them, 

 have founded their respective systems. 



Artedi, who was foremost, perceiving that some fishes had 

 prickly fins, as the pike; that others had soft pliant ones, as the 

 herring; and that others still wanted that particular fin by which 

 the gills are opened and shut, as the eel, made out a system from 

 these varieties. Linnaeus, on the other hand, rejecting this sys- 

 tem, which he found liable to too many exceptions, considered 

 the fins not with regard to their substance, but their position. 

 The ventral fins seem to be the great object of his system ; he 

 considers them in fishes sup])lying the same offices as feet i/i 

 quadrupeds; and from their total absence, or from their being 

 situated nearer the head or the tail, in diflferent fishes, he takes 

 the differences of his sj'stem. 



These arrangemeiits, which are totally arbitrary, and which 

 are rather a method than a science, are always fluctuating ; and 

 the last is generally preferred to that which went before. There 

 hiis lately appeared, however, a system composed by Mr Gouan, 

 of Montpellier, that deserves applause for more than its novelty. 



