lii THE QUINARY SYSTEM. 



then make of the two legs of birds, and the fourteen feet of the 

 wood-louse family, (Oniscidce, Leach,) or the two hundred feet 

 of the millepede, (Julus terrestris, Linnaeus) ? In order to re- 

 duce these to five, he must have recourse to all the fanciful analo- 

 gies above exemplified from GeofFroy St. Hilaire and Savigny. 

 Should I be told it is not to organs but to groups the Jives apply, 

 I could easily show that the published Quinary groups strikingly 

 exhibit the baseless character of the system. For example, the 

 first circle of birds has not as yet five but three members ; the 

 cuckoos are ranked with climbers, though they do not climb, and 

 the perchers include larks that do not perch, and exclude phea- 

 sants and herons, which do.* Hence, the circular groups of fives 

 thus inaccurately constructed must be given up. Were any of 

 these numbers indeed universal in nature, we should not have one 

 naturalist (Dr. Fleming) fixing upon two; others (Oken, Cuvier, 

 and Fries) upon four ; others (MacLeay and Vigors) upon jive; 

 and others upon seven. 



" The number five," says Kirby, 66 which Mr. MacLeay 

 assumes for one basis of his system as consecrated in nature, 

 seems to me to yield to the number seven, which is consecrated 

 both in nature and scripture. Metaphysicians" [Paley]f " reckon 

 seven principal operations of the mind; musicians seven principal 

 tones of music; and opticians seven primary colours." J For this 

 we may also give the great Class-ic?! authority of Linnaeus, who, 

 we are told, if he had lived, intended to extend his five-fold 

 division of classes, orders, genera, species, and varieties derived 

 from the number of the human toes and fingers to seven, by 

 adding legions and tribes, because the world was created in seven 

 days. Locke mentions a musician of a similar cast of mind, who 

 was of opinion that the world was created in seven days, because 

 there are seven notes in music ! ! ! § The Israelites indeed were 

 commanded to reckon time by sevens in memorial of the creation, || 

 and all the commentators from Philo, Cyprian, and the venerable 

 Bede, down to Daubuz, Faber, and Penn, agree that the Hebrew 



* Linn. Trans, xiv. and Zool. Journ. ii. 392, et seq. 

 f Paley's Lectures, MSS. % Int. to Entomol. iii. 15, Note. 



§ Quoted in Brown's Lect. on Philos. i. 172. 

 || Woodhouse, Annot. on the Apocalypse, p. 58. 



