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PREFACE. Xlll 



even be said to require the exercise of no other 

 faculty than that of vision. The discovery of tiie 

 natural one, on the contrary, is only to be hoped for 

 from a cautious process of inductive and analogical 

 reasoning, applied to facts gathered from observa- 

 tion. Thus it requires neither talent nor ingenuity 

 to invent an artificial system, and there may be as 

 many hundreds of such as there are heads to devise 

 them; but of natural systems there is and can be 

 only one. Finally, the former is the miserable re- 

 source of the feeble mind of man, unable to com- 

 prehend in one view the innumerable works of the 

 creation ; whereas the natural system is the plan of 

 the creation itself, the work of an all-wise, all- 

 powerful Deity. 



It will then scarcely be believed, that while the 

 scientific world is inundated with artificial systems, 

 the imperfections of which are daily discovered 

 and daily criticized, not one in a hundred natural- 

 ists takes a more exalted view of the creation 

 than to become acquainted with that farrago of 

 names which so many confound with the natural 

 system. And it will still less be credited, that some 

 of those even who can properly distinguish them, 

 either covertly insinuate or openly assert that we 

 ought to rest contented in our ignorance, and to 

 cease our inquiries after those affinities, from the 

 study of which, says a learned writer, " the science 



