Xlii INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 



the general voice has most honoured and respected, there is but one 

 opinion on this Linnean axiom. Nearly every writer, in fact, who 

 now aims at distinction by investigating natural affinities, prosecutes 

 this "grand, this ulterior object*;" and it has justly been pronounced 

 that a correct knowledge of the natural system is the " primum and 

 ultimum of true science f." 



Now it is a fact no less remarkable than true, that while the import- 

 ance of studying the general laws of creation becomes every day more 

 apparent, and its necessity is more and more insisted upon, still that 

 our knowledge of those laws during the last ten years has remained 

 completely stationary. To show upon what foundation this assertion 

 rests, it will be necessary to make a slight digression. 



It was in the year 1819 that the attention of Zoologists was 

 awakened by the appearance of the celebrated Horce Entomologies of 

 the younger Macleay ; and this was followed, two years afterwards, by 

 the erudite Systema Mycologicum of Elias Fries, one of the greatest 

 Botanists of Germany. The authority of the Systema Naturae, so 

 far as regards natural arrangement, had already been severely shaken 

 by the Regne Animal of the great Cuvier, — not to mention in Orni- 

 thology the writings of Le Vaillant. But the system of the great 

 Swede was now to be annihilated. 



Differing in their details, and each unconscious of the other's sen- 

 timents, it is no less extraordinary than interesting to trace the perfect 

 agreement of these eminent men on two great and primary principles : 

 first, that the natural series of affinities throughout all the grand divi- 

 sions of Nature is circular ; and secondly, that every minor division or 

 group forms its own peculiar circle. 



In estimating the value of these theories, it may be said that the 

 first is assumed ; since, until the whole of the animal or the vegetable 

 kingdom has been analysed, the true course of affinity might be con- 

 jectured, but could not be demonstrated. It is, however, an assump- 

 tion fully warranted by the second conclusion : this latter resting 

 entirely upon analysis, and therefore capable, in such groups as have 



* Annulosa Jav., Pref. xii. t Kirby, Intr. to Entom., p. 4, 547. 



