xxiv 



LINNiEAN SYSTEM. 



crowd of unarranged ideas, like the disunited and scattered links 

 of what ought to form a beautiful and magnificent chain. 



That I am not alone in thus viewing the system of Linnaeus, 

 I could show by numerous references to eminent authorities. 

 " Through the whole of the Linneean classifications," says 

 Dr. Aiken, " there runs the same attention to minute circum- 

 stances in quest of distinctive marks, which throws a littleness 

 over his systems, and gives them the praise rather of ingeni- 

 ous invention, than of coincidence with the sublime plans of 

 creation."* Professor Lindley is still more severe, when he 

 says, the Linneean system " skims only the surface of things, 

 and leaves the student in the fancied possession of a sort of 

 information, which it is easy enough to obtain, but which is 

 of little value when acquired."! When the botanical, which is 

 by far the best of the Linnsean systems, is thus spoken of by a dis- 

 tinguished master of the science, what are we to think of the others ? 

 White of Selborne, speaking also of Linnsean botany, treats it in 

 the same way, when he says, " the standing objection has always 

 been, that it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the 

 memory, without improving the mind or advancing any real know- 

 ledge," and " where the science is carried no farther than a mere 

 systematic classification, the charge is but too true.J" Alluding to 

 the student of such systems, Mr. Vigors most truly and elegantly 

 says, " his mind becomes wedded to a subordinate branch of his 

 subject, and is drawn away from the contemplation of sublimer 

 truths. It is upon the labours of man that he dwells, and not upon 

 the works of the creation. He dwindles, as it were, into a mere 

 compositor of the volume of nature, artificially putting together 

 the symbolic words that stand for ideas, while the ideas themselves, 

 in their true meaning and spirit, escape him. And thus the exer- 

 tions which, properly directed, might have tended to explain the 

 laws and elucidate the operations of nature, which might have been 

 devoted to a study purely intellectual, are lost in a pursuit which is 

 strictly and exclusively mechanical." § "Linnseus," says Mr.Kirby, 

 "taught us, indeed, how to name properly the smaller branches and 



* Letters to a Son, i. 126. 



+ Nat. Hist. Selb. 



f Synopsis of the British Flora, Pref. p. xi. 

 § Zool. Jour. i. 181. 



