668 MEMOIR OF REV. JOHN FLEMING, D.D. 
navigated; whose depths and shallows he had not himself sounded. The fol-. 
lowers of Linnzus were the objects of FLEMING’s condemnation rather than the 
master himself. They had been content with the mere entry of a name, when 
they ought to have supplied a pregnant page to the great book of nature. 
The classification of Linnzus was followed by that of Cuvirr, which, unlike 
that of the great Swede, is founded on the anatomical structure of the 
animals. The animal kingdom is divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, 
and the primary groups in his first division, Vertebrata, are founded upon the dif- 
ferent kinds of motion and respiration of the animals. These are the two most 
celebrated systems of modern times. They both embrace the whole animal 
kingdom and form the basis of all other scientific methods of arrangement. 
The defect in the system of Liynzus consists in his having assigned charac- 
ters to the primary classes which do not apply to the orders included in them; 
whilst the error of the Cuvierian arrangement is in using modifications of positive 
characters along with positive and negative ones in the formation of the primary 
classes. It was to remedy this defect, and to establish a more scientific prin- 
ciple in the use of positive and negative characters, that FLEMING proposed and 
explained his Binary or Dichotomous method in the “ Philosophy of Zoology.” Of 
this method he says, ‘“ The investigation and distribution of animals would be 
comparatively easy, if the forms and modifications of the different systems of 
organs exhibited constant mutual relations. Thus, if we consider the organs of 
any system to be in their most perfect state when they admit into their structure 
the greatest variety of combinations, and execute the greatest number of motions 
or functions, does it happen that, when we have discovered in any species one 
system of organs in its most perfect state, all the other systems may be expected 
to be in the same condition? The whole history of the animal kingdom contra- 
dicts such expectations of co-existing characters, and justifies the conclusion that, 
in the same species, one or more of the systems of organs may be in a perfect 
state, in co-operation with others which may be considered as imperfect.” In a 
note appended to this paragraph he gives the offence to Cuvier of which that 
illustrious anatomist complained in his letter already quoted. FLEMING says, 
“Tt is truly surprising to find such an observer as Cuvisr, in the face of observa- 
tions and his own experience, asserting the existence of this mutual dependence 
of the different organs, or, as he is pleased to term them, the necessary conditions 
of existence. In his ‘ View of the Relations which exist amongst the Variations 
of the several Organs’ (Comp. Anat., vol. i. p. 47), he says—‘ It is on this mutual 
dependence of the functions, and the aid they reciprocally yield to one another, 
that the laws which determine the relations of their organs are founded—laws 
which have their origin in a necessity equal to that of the metaphysical or 
mathematical laws; for it is evident that a suitable harmony between organs 
which act on one another is a necessary condition of the existence of the being to 

