XXX 



LINNiEAN SYSTEM. 



in which the works of creation appear in the form of petty, muti- 

 lated scraps, out of all proportion with the originals ; and each and 

 all of their descriptions may be easily proved to be grossly inaccu- J 

 rate, inasmuch as they are, systematically and by design, deficient 

 in the chief details that are of any possible interest to a student. 

 It would be superfluous to do more than refer to the preceding quo- 

 tations respecting the grebe's nest, and the bank swallow, to prove 

 my position beyond all controversy, though I am well prepared to 

 hear it stigmatised as an unproved assertion. We cannot open a 

 scientific journal, an encyclopaedia, or a volume of the transactions 

 of any of our learned societies, without finding countless proofs of 

 these facts. What is no less surprising, those writers who have 

 ventured to inveigh against this, often show that they are irresist- 

 ibly swept along the stream of fashion, by inditing what are called 

 Monographs, in rigid accordance with Linnsean barrenness of 

 idea and of deduction: " A wordish description," to use the 

 language of Sir Philip Sidney, " which doth neither strike, 

 pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul." # Such a procedure 

 unquestionably drags down philosophy from the pure eminence 

 on which she sits, to the very dust of the plain. f "Those," it has 

 been justly said, " who employ themselves in disguising and 

 degrading science by cacophonous nomenclature, and a parade of 

 barbarous Latinity, which fools think learning, are entitled to 

 reprobation and contempt. There are many such in France, and 

 some among ourselves, — great men in their little circles: they do 

 well to make the most of this, for they may rest assured, that how- 

 ever high they may rank in their own estimation, or in that of 

 their coteries, the world neither knows nor cares any thing about 

 them." % 



It grieves me to see several living naturalists of splendid talent, 

 both for observation, philosophic deduction, and eloquent narra- 

 tive, frittering away their time upon nomenclature, monographs, 

 and Linnsean indices of nondescript species, which any subaltern 

 attendant in a museum could execute sufficiently well ; and when 



* Defence of Poesy, p. 19, Gray's ed, Oxford, 1829. 

 f Ludit istis animus non proficit, et philosophiam a fastigio dedueit in planum. 



— Cicero. 



% Loudon's Mag. of Nat. Hist. i. 370. 



