434 FALLACY OF THE SEPTENARY SYSTEM 



Try then, my beauty, tune another measure, 

 Pan shall return thy labours with an echo ; 

 Here, 'neath the plane-tree, all my love forgetting. 

 Woo me to slumber. 



■[No. V. — The Cicada. Translated from the Greek J] 



Wandering once, I saw a spider weaving 

 Lithesome c his meshes, and a poor Cicada, 

 Struggling captive in the filmy network. 



Chirped for his freedom. 



Quickly I hastened to the child, song-loving ; 

 Quickly I loosed him from the fearful durance ; 

 " Fly, then," said I, " with liberty I pay thee 



" For thy sweet music." 



Art. LI I. — Exposure of the Fallacy of the Septenary 

 System in Natural History. 



Sir, — Little did I imagine that I should ever again enter 

 the field of disputation in matters of physical relation ; but 

 extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary exertions ; 

 and unwilling as I feel to appear again before the public — 

 unaccustomed as I am now to wield the pen, a voice seems to 

 summon me from my retirement, and to demand of me one 

 final effort before that pen has sunk for ever into disuse and 

 its master into oblivion. It has been my object, during a 

 longer period than most writers can boast of enjoying the 

 public ear, to expose error, to promote truth, and to drive 

 from natural science fiction and theory. How great has been 

 my joy to observe the decline and the dying struggles of the 

 Quinary system, and at length to have witnessed its existence 

 becoming a matter of history, and being merely remembered 

 as a joke against those who had the shallowness and credulity 

 to listen to it; but how great has been my sorrow to see 

 another apparition, more potent than the first, arise Phoenix- 

 like from its ashes, and blaze with a brightness that almost 

 made truth itself look dim. 



That such should be the case in this country, I am not at 



* " With pliant feet" in the Greek, which would make too many feet of it. 



