XXX PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE 



the Royal Society, in two volumes folio, in 1685. 

 This work not only speaks of fishes in general, 

 but treats of all the known species, and de- 

 scribes them in a systematic order. In short, 

 these two naturalists, perhaps we ought to say 

 Ray only, may be considered as the first true 

 systematic zoologists ; as the first originators 

 of that mode of treating the subject which has 

 eventually raised Zoology to the rank of a 

 science. The works of Ray under his own 

 name are, Sy?wpsis Methodica Animalium Qua- 

 drupedum et Serpentum, 1683, octavo ; Synop- 

 sis Methodica Avium et Piscium, 1713 (pub- 

 lished after his death) ; as also was his Historia 

 Insectorum. 



We now arrive at an era in which a new and 

 enlightened mode of philosophizing led to the 

 most brilliant discoveries and unparalleled ex- 

 tension of science, in which every branch of 

 human knowledge has made the most rapid 

 strides, and in which the errors of ignorance 

 and the reveries of fancy have given way to 

 the spirit of philosophy and the love of truth. 

 Such we believe is, in most particulars, a cor- 

 rect character of the eighteenth century. The 

 harbinger of this era was one of those extra- 

 ordinary men which nature seems to have sent 

 periodically into the world to alter the face of 



