30 



adhered to. Linnasus's distinguishing character 

 was the bill, that of Vieillot, Klein, and others, 

 the claws, and all these systems, whatever each 

 may be as a whole, contain flagrant errors in some 

 of the minutiae. The student will, nevertheless, 

 find it useful to acquaint himself with the system 

 of the great French Naturalist, as its very defects 

 may have the use of proving to him the fallacy of 

 any system in which the series is single. — The 

 best edition is that of Griffith ; of this edition the 

 birds (3 vols.) may be had separate. 



The Quinary System : — discovered by TV. S. 

 Macleay in 1818. — In a work on the rise and 

 progress of Ornithology, we think it our duty to 

 make a few remarks on a system which, if not 

 " the Natural System," is at least founded on the 

 principles of Nature. The first and fundamental 

 principle inculcated by Macleay and his disciples 

 is, that all nature moves in a circle, and that the 

 series of beings is unbroken ; and, secondly, that 

 each group and each species has a double affinity. 

 Every one of the higher groups has a binary divi- 

 sion, viz. the normal or typical, and the aberrant, 

 the former containing two, and the latter three, of 

 the five subdivisions of which each of the higher 

 groups is composed. We cannot here explain the 

 doctrine of analogy — which is wholly distinct from 

 affinity, — but we can give an instance of it : — the 

 Hedge Dunnock in the Sylviadce, represents the 

 House Sparrow in the Fringillidce ; that is, the 

 one bears the same relation to the Sylviadce that 

 the other does to the Fringillidce, and hence Xkey 

 are said to bear an analogy to each other. The 

 whole zoological series, before arranged in a sim- 

 ple chain, according to this system revolves in an 

 almost infinite number of circles around man, from 



