^ ill Notiirol History. 495 



mais set at naught all our classification by their osteology and 

 mode of brinoins; forth. 



The adoption of these numerous terms, intended to express 

 fixed ideas, must be looked on with suspicion. 'J'he terms 

 species and genus are too well established by custom, and are 

 so clearly the result of convenience, and moreover conform so 

 closely to the ordinary use of these words, that their utility 

 cannot be questioned ; but those numerous subdivisions current 

 among our neighbours, and sensibly increasing among ourselves, 

 may well be doubted as unphilosophical language. To each of 

 them is attempted to be assigned a definite value beforehand, 

 and an impracticable degree of precision ; and we deceive our- 

 selves by fancying that we can deal with these delicate and 

 fleeting instruments of thought difterently from the rest of the 

 world. But are we to attempt to fetter nature by our systems 

 and terms ? " Books should follow sciences, not sciences books," 

 says the immortal Bacon ; yet the adoption of systems and 

 technical expressions, which have received their definition be- 

 forehand, cannot be employed without the danger of perpetuating 

 false hypotheses, and an apprehension on the part of the ignorant, 

 that these inventions give us some power over nature not be- 

 longing to ordinary language. 



The more correct mode would be to exclude from the natural 

 method most of these terms, and to employ in their place some 

 convertible words of looser import, as indeed M. Cuvier has to 

 some extent done; such for instance, as group, section, division, 

 to express those larger assemblages of approximations to as- 

 signed forms, which are rather predicated than proved ; and in 

 many cases to point them out by mere signs, such as are used 

 in printing. Thus, for instance, the word section, or any similar 

 word, might be employed to express the plants severally com- 

 prehended in the order Graminece, the class Compositœ, and the 



VOL. XV. 3 s division 



