55:2 Classification of Animals. 



spects be inferior to that of Linnaeus, still its comprehensive and 



philosophic views, we consider, gave that direction to the study or* 

 Zoology which paved the way to the discovery of those principles 

 upon which the natural system is hased. Of partial systems, or 

 such as are confined to particular classes of animals, that of Tem- 

 minck in ornithology is justly considered the best ; his primary di- 

 visions, though forced and unnatural, and amounting to as many as 

 sixteen in number, being clear, and therefore easily comprehended, 

 and his genera, though few, well and carefully defined. The other 

 ornithological systems noticed are those of Illiger, Yieillot, and 

 Lesson, the peculiar features of which respectively come under the 

 author's review. Of systems restricted to entomology, those of De 

 Geer, Fabricius, Latreille, Clairville, and Leach, are particularly 

 mentioned, and are accompanied by tables containing their divisions 

 of the class. The chapter concludes with a few apposite observa- 

 tions on Binary or Dichotomous systems, which he shows to be not 

 only among the most artificial of all arrangements, but as even in- 

 competent to answer the purpose of a mere index to genera and 

 species. From artificial, the author in the next chapter passes to 

 the consideration of natural systems, or those " which endeavour to 

 explain the multifarious relations which one object bears to another, 

 not simply in their direct affinity, but in their more remote relations, 

 whereby they typify or represent other objects totally distinct in 

 structure and organization from themselves by certain general laws." 

 After noticing Hermann's work, the Tabula Affinitatum Animali- 

 um, and J.amarclts System of the Soft or Molluscous Animals, in 

 which that eminent naturalist caught a glimpse of the first great 

 principle of natural arrangement, by discovering that the animal 

 series was of a complex and branching nature, and not simple or 

 linear, as had been previously supposed, he passes to the circular 

 theory of Mr M'Leay,as developed in the Horoe Entomological of that 

 enlightened author, in which the fundamental principles of the na- 

 tural system were first made public. Of this important treatise, 

 the origin and foundation of a new and better school of Zoology, 

 which is fast attaining a degree of perfection that could never have 

 been acquired under any former system, he gives a detailed, expo- 

 sition, rendered the more necessary from the extreme rarity of the 

 work in question, whose philosophic pages, few students can now 

 hope to have an opportunity of consulting. This exposition he con- 

 cludes with some important remarks, which, that they may not lose 

 their effect, we give in the words of the author. " We have been 



