PRESENT STATE OF ERPETOLOGY. 351 



(170.) The most unscientific person is aware that analy- 

 sis and generalisation are two branches of knowledge^ 

 which^ although absolutely essential to combine for the 

 discovery of truth_, relate to different operations of the 

 mind; for each may be pursued independently of the other. 

 In the first, the mental energies, as it were, are concen- 

 trated, nay, even contracted, to the individual object 

 before it. In the second, the very reverse of this takes 

 place : the mind, duly informed upon the general, not 

 the specific or individual features, is called upon to ex- 

 pand ; and, from a variety of objects, to discover those 

 occult or general principles of union or variation which 

 pervade through large assemblages. In the former of 

 these inquiries, as we have just observed, every thing 

 has been done; in the latter, comparatively nothing. To 

 divide and subdivide merely for the sake of division^ 

 or to facilitate research, is a very different thing from 

 doing the same with an ulterior object.* Now the ulte- 

 rior object which every great zoologist aims at, is the dis- 

 covery of the series of nature, or, in other words, the 

 natural system. It might, therefore, have been supposed 

 that the erpetologists of Germany, a country which gave 

 birth to the illustrious Fries t, would have imbibed 

 something of his generalising spirit ; and that they 

 would have constructed their systems, however different 

 from each other, with some reference to the theory of 

 their countryman, or at least to those innumerable resem- 

 blances which were to be found in this class of animals, 

 no less than in all others. But not the least trace of 

 any such intention, or of any such enlarged views, so 

 far as we can discover, can be found in their writings. 

 They have, indeed, constructed numerous divisions, but 

 so far as regards any mutual or reciprocal relations be- 



* The division and arrangement of the marsupial and the ruminating 

 quadrupeds, is a favourite theme with our young nomenclators, who gene- 

 rally put forth a new one in the periodicals every six months, founded upon 

 some fresh bone or anatomical peculiarity. All enlarged views of natural 

 arrangem^t appear above their comprehension, and are therefore deemed 

 perfectly visionary. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, when they limit 

 their attention to a speck only in the vast field of animal life. 



f See Preliminary Discourse, p. 92. 



