CONCLUDING REMARKS. 97 



natural system we have ventured to announce. If we were 

 to be guided by the high authority of deservedly great 

 nameSj rather than by our own impressions of what are 

 the true affinities of nature^ we should be equally autho- 

 rised and encouraged in making this attempt. The 

 is an authority now reigning over this department of 

 zoology^ as omnipotent, perhaps, as that which Linn^us 

 once exercised over aU branches of natural history; — 

 a zoologist whose superior genius every one must 

 acknowledge, and whose materials for study and re- 

 flection, during a long and brilliant career, were almost 

 boundless. We have laboured for the last fifteen years 

 to dispel the illusive idea, that natural affinities could 

 be expressed by a simple series ; and that all such ex- 

 hibitions of nature, however useful, were merely arti- 

 ficial combinations. Now if those few who still doubt 

 on this subject, required such an authority as we have 

 intimated to decide their wavering opinion, such a one 

 exists, and will be found in the learned author of the 

 system we have just surveyed, — the illustrious Cuvier. 

 This extraordinary man, as if to bequeath to us the 

 result of all his varied and profound experience, thus 

 concludes his preliminary observations upon fishes 

 in general, and they deserve from all the most profound 

 attention. In speaking of the cartilaginous order, he 

 thus expresses himself* : — "'It is chiefly in these that 

 the futility of classing beings in a single series is visible; 

 several of its genera, the rays and the sharks among 

 others, are considerably above common flsh, by the com- 

 phcated nature of their organs of sense and of generation ; 

 these latter being more developed, in some respects, 

 than those even of birds : yet other genera, which are 

 approximated by evident transitions, such as the lam- 

 preys and Ammoc(Btes, become so simplified, that they 

 have been regarded as forming a passage to articulated 

 worms ; for the latter certainly do not possess a 

 skeleton, and their muscular apparatus is attached to 

 membranous and tendinous supports." — " Let itj 



* Reg Anim. GrifF. Cuv. p. 22. 

 VOL. I. H 



