11 



endeavour even prepare the way for its establishment, and act 

 the mere part of a herald to proclaim its approach, I shall not 

 only be satisfied, but delighted. 



I cannot here plough my toilsome track through the wild 

 waste of systems and speculations, which have embarrassed, rather 

 than assisted, natural history during the last hundred years ; my 

 aim will be more to make myself understood than comment on 

 the merits of others, except as I can lay them under contribution 

 to enhance my own. 



Previously to the publication of Mr. MacLeay's Horce Entomo- 

 logicce, it appears to have been an opinion universally prevalent, 

 that there existed in nature a regularly graduated scale of beings, 

 beginning with man as the most perfect, and terminating in the 

 least perfect creature known to possess life. One ingenious author 

 had varied a little from this theory by allowing a double series to 

 nature's works, which commencing on a level with the most per- 

 fect animal and most perfect plant, descended gradually and ap- 

 proached as they descended, until they met in those jelly-like 

 substances which seem yet to hover between the two kingdoms, 

 puzzling naturalists by their proximity to both — the system thus 

 assuming the shape of the letter V.* 



However convenient for the formation of a catalogue, or the 

 arrangement of a cabinet, such a system may be ; and however 

 inconvenient or impracticable any other conceivable plan may 

 appear, I think few will concur in imagining man capable of, or 

 warranted in, thus setting up limits and boundary-marks to the 

 works and power of his Maker ; for the next step, as a matter of 

 course, would be the application of similar restrictions to infinite 

 space, which he might as reasonably expect to bring under his 

 sapient admeasurement. 



Our country has the credit of having first sapped the foundation 

 of a building, which, though by its founderf termed a commodious 

 and well covered house, could not retain religion or reason among 

 its inmates ; indeed, the illustrious Swede was himself the first to 

 see and to know that his mansion, however commodious, was 

 built but on the sand ; but knowing its imperfections, he cared 



* The system of Lamarck. f Linnaeus. 



B 2 



