DIFFICULTIES OF THE NATURAL SYSTEM. 51 



the system be a linear series or a circular one — whether it 

 be supposed to resemble the intricacies of a map* or a 

 sphere — whether it be resolvable throughout its divisions in 

 a binary (Dr. Fleming and Haworth), trinary (Swainson), 

 quaternary (Fries), quinary (MacLeay), or septenary manner 

 (Newman) — whether we confine ourselves to the now ex- 

 istent species, or have regard to the countless multitudes of 

 extinct species — whether by means of any of these proposed 

 modes or any other, — it must be evident that natural history, 

 and especially philosophical natm-al history, is too new a 

 subject to allow any one to assert that his system, and his 

 only, is superior to all the rest. Great progress has been 

 made of late years in this field, but how great is the yet vm- 

 trodden portion we have to labour at unceasingly ; and he 

 who, by a minute analysis of any animal, enables us to solve 

 any dubious point connected therewith, does more for the 

 elucidation of this much abused natm-al system than the 

 greatest and most ingenious theorist who has yet taken the 

 subject in hand. 



The celebrated Cuvier, whose laborious researches and 

 acute reasoning made such vast strides in the philosophy of 

 natural histor)% and efi'ected as great a revolution in received 

 opinions as was ever brought about by one man in any sci- 

 ence, was fully sensible of the correctness of these opinions. 

 He labom-ed not to support system, but to discover the truth ; 

 and the fvu-ther he advanced, seemed the more convinced 

 that he did not know enough to enable him to form a system. 

 And if this were the case with th^ greatest comparative 

 anatomist who ever Uved, how truly must the same remark 

 be made of those who, without ever having touched the dis- 



* Linnaeus, in his Philosophia Botanica, thus speaks of the natural 

 system as exhibited by plants :— " Plantae omnes utrinque affinitatem 

 raonstrant uti territorium in mappa geographical''' 



