258 History of Conchology. 



habits and habitations were huddled together under a common head, 

 it was answered that to derive characters from such particulars was 

 contrary to axiom and unphilosophical ; and if it were demonstrative 

 that the class of Testacea, as a whole, was constituted of heterogene- 

 ous disparates, — as for example when Pallas indicated the difference 

 between this class and the Serpulee, — what then ? Nature gloried in 

 variety and oppositions, and was herself systemless, * as if it were 

 possible to believe that He who made every thing in wisdom and 

 order had shook His creatures from His hand, with the same wanton 

 unordered profusion that the poet has represented the jocund May, 

 flinging the flowerets from her teeming lap. Such were the futile 

 reasons by which this System was upheld, and so firm was its des- 

 potism that, until within these twenty years, there was little or no 

 relaxation on its hold of public opinion ; and its evil effects are too 

 evident in the superficialness of the productions which emanated from 

 this school. 



Even in France the Linnsean system soon became little less pre- 

 dominant under the leading of Brugmere, but the regard the French 

 paid to it was of a less slavish character than it had assumed in Britain. 

 Brnguiere, though a Linnsean in principle, carried forward in some de- 

 gree the system of his master by intercalating several new and ob- 

 viously necessary genera ; and he was otherwise aconchologist of high- 

 er attainments than any England could at that period boast of. He 

 cannot be said to have promoted conchology in any very sensible de- 

 gree, but he made no effort to arrest it, or detain the science at the 

 stage where Linnaeus had left it. Nor indeed is it perhaps possible to 

 stop the march of any, however trivial the branch of science, to perfec- 

 tion. Like the operations of Nature in her living productions ever tend- 

 ing to maturity, there are periods of acceleration and delay, and causes 

 may for a season induce a sickly weakness that waits long for a re- 

 medy, but come at last this will. Conchology was now in her sickly 

 time, — nevertheless in a state of constant advancement. Ellis, Baster, 

 Bohadtch, Pallas, Muller, Forskal, Solander, and Otho Fabricius, all 

 of whom might have seen Linnaeus in the flesh, and were his imme- 

 diate successors, drew attention to the naked molluscans in particu- 



* " Nature does not seem to have observed any system, and an artificial one 

 will ever be attended with anomalies. Whatever method therefore most readily 

 leads to the subject under investigation, is certainly the best, and in this case it 

 is of small importance where that subject is placed, or how far it is removed 

 from others to which it seems to hear a general resemblance." — Maton in Pul- 

 teney's Life of Linnaeus, p. 238 — Sir J. E. Smith also allows himself to talk of 

 the " irregularities of Nature," as an apology for some inconsistencies in the 

 zoological works of Linnaeus. — Tracts, p. 136. 



