SYSTEMS IN GENERAL. 133 
Systema Nature may have cramped the energies, and 
stifled the investigations, of those who might otherwise 
have struck out new paths of enquiry, this deference to 
Linneus has prevented our shelves from being burdened, 
and our attention distracted, by the innumerable artificial 
systems which have inundated the Continent, and which, 
it is to be feared, will continue to impede the advance 
of true science, so long as such inventions are looked 
upon as authorities, or are quoted as synonymes. 
(185.) The history and exposition of zoological 
systems must not be confounded with the history of the 
science, the latter exhibiting the progress of discovery, 
while the former is properly confined to the arrangement 
of these discoveries. We feel embarrassed, however, at 
the difficulty of selection: for, independently of those 
systems which embrace the whole animal kingdom, 
there are numerous others which relate only to parti- 
cular classes, each of which (like those which have gone 
before, and have passed into oblivion) has, at this 
time, its admirers and its advocates. These also will 
*‘have their day,” and endure for a season, until the natural 
classification shall be developed. M. Lesson has been 
at some pains to perpetuate the memory of no less than 
fourteen systems of ornithology, nearly all of which have 
been proposed by eminent naturalists, and he has added 
the projet of his own, written in 1828, which is, never- 
theless, very different from another, which he published 
two years after. Every year, in short, increases the 
number of these systems ; and in ornithology alone we 
could almost double the above number. Entomology 
has been a fruitful mother of systems; although, in con- 
chology, few attempts have been made to set aside the 
classification of Lamarck. Were we, however, to ven-~ 
ture upon a general specification of all these systems, 
we should weary the reader with interminable columns 
of names, and occupy space which might be more pro- 
fitably filled. On the other hand, to omit all details 
on the systematic views of such men as Aristotle, Lin- 
neus, Cuvier, Illiger, Latreille, and Lamarck, whose 
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