THE QUINARY SYSTEM* 



xxxiii 



THE QUINARY SYSTEM AND MODERN DOCTRINE OF TYPES, 

 AFFINITIES, AND ANALOGIES. 



It was a fancy of Darwin's, borrowed from Epicurus,* that 

 animals • were produced by some inexplicable chemistry, from a 

 single and simple filament or threadlet of matter, which, by its 

 efforts to procure nourishment, lengthened out parts of its body 

 into arms and other members. When some of these supposed 

 threadlets of matter again had, in process of time, improved 

 themselves into birds, the different forms of their bills were, he 

 says, in the same way gradually acquired and hereditarily trans- 

 mitted, as were the long legs of some water fowl, (Gjwllatores, 

 Illiger,) from the endeavours of the birds to elevate their bodies 

 above the water in which they waded, f Supposing for a moment 

 this wild theory to be true, we might, in forming a systematic 

 catalogue of animals, divide them into groups according to the 

 similarity of their improved organs ; for example, the long-legged 

 wading birds, just mentioned, in one group, and the swimming 

 birds with webbed feet (Natatores, Illiger) in another; which 

 two groups we might again for convenience subdivide into subor- 

 dinate groups, such as the snipes, (Scolopacida, Vigors,) the 

 rails, (Rallidce, Leach,) the ducks, (Anatidce, Vigors,) and the 

 gulls, (LaridcB, Leach,) which, according to this fanciful hypo- 

 thesis, are all more nearly or distantly related or akin to each 

 other, as they are more advanced in the improvement of their 

 organs, compared with the original threadlet that had none. 



The Quinary System, under consideration, while it professes to 

 reject this strange doctrine, at the same time adopts its very lan- 

 guage in the most unequivocal manner. J " Though nature," says 

 Mr. Vigors, with peculiar elegance of illustration, " no where ex- 

 hibits an absolute division between her various groups, she yet 

 displays sufficiently distinctive characters to enable us to arrange 



* Lucretius, De Natura Rerum, v. 795, &c. 



f Darwin, Zoonomia, sect, xxxix. 3d edit. London. 1801. See also La- 

 marck, Philosophic Zoologique : and Robinet, De la Nature, vol. 5, passim. 



X See MacLeay, Horae Entomologies, and Linn. Trans, xiv. 46 ; Vigors, 

 Linn. Trans, xiv. 398 ; Zoological Journ. passim; and Gardens and Menag. 

 of the Zool. Soc. Del. passim, 



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