ORDER CARNASSIER. 59 



learned world. The illustrious Linne was long the Pope of 

 naturalists, and if one man ever deserved such an honour 

 he was that man. But when the infallibility of these mighty- 

 spirits was once questioned and shaken, theories after theo- 

 ries arose in quick succession, and fell with the like ra- 

 pidity. Many shone for a time as guiding stars in the 

 intellectual hemisphere, that now, shorn of their beams, are 

 esteemed to have been but delusive meteors. 



" Suns sunk on suns, and systems systems crush'd.'' 



In zoological arrangement, however, the safest way is 

 the golden mean. System should certainly be as near to 

 nature as possible, but in endeavouring to approximate 

 it too closely, we introduce complication and perplexity. 

 The grand object, the facilitation of knowledge, is defeated ; 

 the end is altogether frustrated by too fastidious an atten- 

 tion to the means. 



The number of species and of sub-divisions enumerated 

 in the Table appended to this order, while they illustrate 

 some of the observations previously made in the present 

 essay, may appear at the same time to militate against 

 opinions therein expressed. We may be said to deprecate 

 the undue multiplications of technicalities in the text, and 

 to make use of all that have been hitherto employed in the 

 Table. 



But we beg to remind the reader, that it is by no means 

 intended to adopt the species or divisions, because they 

 are inserted. Far be it from us, unconditionally to criticise 

 the zoological labours of others, or judicially to sanction 

 these on the one hand, or reject those on the other. The 

 object intended is merely to present the reader with a re- 

 pertory for all that has been written on the subject, or at 

 least for the original descriptions of species designated 

 under their several different names. Occasionally, and 



