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REVIEWS AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS. 



I. — Dr Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Natural History. 1. On the 

 Geography and Classification of Animals. By W. Swainson, 

 Esq — 2. Classification of Quadrupeds. By W. Swainson, Esq. 

 12mo. Loudon, Longman & Co. 1836. 



In no department of science has a greater or more decided advance 

 and improvement taken place than in that of Zoology. We speak 

 more particularly of what has occurred in our own country, and, we 

 may add, within our own recollection. This, we think, must be 

 admitted and apparent to whoever looks with an unprejudiced eye 

 at the imposing and lofty station it now occupies as a science, and 

 the mode in which the investigation of it is conducted, as compared 

 with its state some fifteen or twenty years ago, when languishing 

 under the trammels of artificial system, and pursued on principles 

 neither philosophic nor in consonance with nature. It is no longer, — 

 Mr Swainson observes, — and we rejoice he thinks himself justified in 

 making the observation, " It is no longer a study of names or of 

 crude technicalities, but, like all other branches of physical science, 

 is become the subject of philosophical investigation, and capable in 

 all its details of similar proof, by inductive and analogical reasoning. 

 For this improved state of our favourite science we are principally 

 indebted, — and with pride we make the assertion, — to the labours and 

 philosophic views of British naturalists ; for though we are willing 

 and anxious to give our due tribute of praise and grateful acknow- 

 ledgments to Continental zoologists for their researches and disco- 

 veries, and are even inclined to believe that the " Regt/e Animal" of 

 the illustrious Cuvier, although that work may have failed in its 

 professed object, the classification of the various objects of the ani- 

 mal kingdom according to their organization, if it did not actually 

 first give the proper direction to zoological investigation, at least 



