NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS. 12? 



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 licgne 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 oryan- 

 isation," in other words, according to their natural 

 aflSnities. Linnaeus, on the other hand, in his Systema 

 NaturcE, 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 Naturce 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 Rtgne 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 



