182 Observations on the 



lows, that nomenclature and systematick arrangement are despoiled 

 of their true value. They remain stationary, while knowledge is 

 advancing. The machinery which was eminently serviceable ia 

 its application to nature, while her productions were limited and 

 of moderate extent, becomes inefficient to operate on the gigantick 

 mass that every day accumulates before us : and that blindly 

 partial bias, which admits no expansion to its size, or addition 

 to its powers, renders it useless to any practical purpose. 



A few brief observations on the erroneous notions that prevail 

 npon this subject, may not be uninteresting to the readers of your 

 journal : and I shall devote the pages, which your kindness has 

 placed at my disposal, to some remarks which strike me as bearing 

 upon the point in question ; confining myself however to that 

 branch of Zoology, on which, having lately devoted some atten- 

 tion to it, I feel myself more competent to hazard an opinion.* 

 The remarks I have to make will, of course, contain little novelty 

 to the scientifick Ornithologist, who is as much above those pre- 

 judices and narrow views which I would reprobate, as beyond 

 the scope of any humble observations which I might be enabled 

 to advance. But there are younger students to whom they may 

 be serviceable. And when we see elementary treatises published 

 every day, which represent the science in exactly the same state of 

 advancement at which it stood near a century back ; when we see 

 the press teeming with dissertations which speak the language only 

 of the same remote period ; when we see the partizans of the same 

 antiquated notions declaiming every Avhere against the introduction 

 of new views and new knowledge, asserting that every species in 

 Ornithology is likely, under the modern modifications, to become 

 a new genus, and that the number of new names that are creep- 

 ing in tend but to perplex and confound, and by their multi- 



* We may shortly expect some convincing arguments on the same subject, 

 as far as it relates to tlie groups of Entomology, from the pen of the distin- 

 guished autliour of the " Horae Entomologicae." I here mention this circum- 

 stance more particularly, as, from that gentleman having, with his usual 

 kindness, communicated to me some time since the early sheets of his 

 " Annulosa Javanica," now in the press, the prior right of having occrpied the 

 same line of reasoning as that which I now pursue is justly due to him. 



