494 M?'. BiciiENO on Sjjstems and Methods 



mode, which was to place this residue at the end. Linnaeus too 

 was very correct when he pronounced his natural orders to be a 

 " Fragment ;" and those persons who imagine it to be necessary 

 or advantageous to find a place for every thing, and to divide and 

 split for the purpose of making such places, appear to lose sight 

 of the chief object of the natural system, and to destroy its utility 

 as an instrument of general reasoning. 



The French writers in general are prone to combine in their 

 systems the very distinct objects of individualizing and genera- 

 lizing. They are for ever subdividing where the great aim 

 should be to combine, and thus they detract from the utility of 

 their arrangements for either purpose. It is they who have 

 countenanced the use of sub-clas&es, cohorts, tribes, stirpes, sub- 

 genera, and sub-species ; and they also are the great contribu- 

 tors to the minute division of genera. Strictly speaking, in the 

 natural system we should employ but few terms of the kind al- 

 luded to, and those of loose application. For instance, the word 

 sort or group would as correctly express any natural assemblage 

 of species, as sub-class, race, tribe, cohort, or stirps ; for what 

 do we know of the relative value of the groups attempted to be 

 pointed out by these expressions ? And how can we say they are 

 not co-ordinate or commensurate with each other ? The great 

 division of cotyledonous plants may, for aught we know, be only 

 equivalent to the order of Grasses ; and a genus in some cases 

 seems as distinct as any class, as Parnassia and Linncca among 

 plants, and iheOrnithorhijnchus and Hippopotamusamongnnimnh. 

 Indeed in the recent work of M. Latreille, " Families ISaturelles 

 du Règne Animal," he has arranged the monotrematous animals 

 in a class by themselves, and has made two orders ; in one case, 

 consisting of a single species, the Ornithorhi/nchus paradoxus, and 

 in the other, of two other species before considered as belonging 

 to that genus. Thus it is, as M. Cuvier remarks, that these ani- 

 mals 



