NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS. 127 
some regard to natural affinities, are generally termed 
Mixed Systems, or Half-artificial methods, while others 
(and generally among this number are the authors them- 
selves) have pronounced them natural arrangements. 
(179.) Of these mixed methods, or half-artificial sys- 
tems, it has been said, that, ‘“‘ while they are at utter 
variance with natural affinities, they do not even answer 
the humble purposes of a catalogue.” The severity of 
this censure has been objected to; but we must still 
think there is some truth in the remark. These mixed 
methods are, in fact, called the natural system, by those 
who have never considered in what the latter truly con- 
sists. The Régne Animal, ‘ distributed according to its 
organisation,” is, perhaps, one of the most striking ex- 
emplifications of a semi-natural classification that has 
ever been published. By assuming that the series there 
exhibited is natural, it teaches the student to believe 
that nature, and not the author, places eagles next to 
whales, and opossums after seals ; and this is termed 
an arrangement of animals “‘ according to their organ- 
isation,’ in other words, according to.their natural 
affinities. Linneus, on the other hand, in his Systema 
Nature, makes no such pretensions; the learned 
Swede contented himself with framing such an artificial 
system as would lead to an immediate knowledge of 
species, and thus to qualify those who came after him 
to speculate upon Nature’s combinations. The conse- 
quence is, that his classification, as a whole, is much 
more comprehensible than that of Cuvier. Let but the 
genera of the Systema Nature be looked upon as fami- 
lies, and let their contents be arranged under artificial 
but definite sections, and no one would hesitate to give 
it the preference, for all practical purposes, over the eru- 
dite but cumbrous volumes of the Réegne Animal, re- 
plete, as the latter unquestionably are, with a mass of 
new and invaluable materials for the real developement 
of that with which the learned author was totally unac- 
quainted,—namely, the very first principles of the 
natural system. We must, therefore, conclude as we 
