284 ANECDOTES. 



" much laconism, to the last edition of his genera plantarum, 

 " which was the result of some Icftures he gave us in summer, in the 

 " country, upon the Natural Orders. 



" These are his merits in botany, to which he gave a quite new ap- 

 " pearance, and enriched with many valuable remarks*." — « If we 

 " make conjefture of the value of the Linn ^ an method," says the 

 celebrated Hill in his Vegetable System, " it will live, even when a 

 " natural method shall be found, as long as there is science." 



" LiNN.^:us manifested the same spirit of systematical order in the 

 " animal reign. He found it a real chaos, in which the infinite number 

 " of animals were confounded without charafteristic distinftion and 



without order. There had hardly been any regular and fixed classes 

 " introduced, at least not among the smaller kinds of animals. But he 

 " made it a regular science. He limited the various classes by plain dis- 

 " tin6live marks, introduced the solid genera, determined the species, 

 " and took pains to lessen the great number of variations. I must 

 " freely own, that Linnaeus himself was very sensible, that his system 

 " of the animal reign was not built upon so safe a foundation as his 

 " botany, and that his generical charafters were far more tottering and 

 " more undefined. It is, however, the only system which comprises the 

 " whole animal reign, which is certainly a great prerogative, if we only 

 " consider the circumstances in which Linnaeus found that science. 

 " It remained almost entirely uncultivated, consisted only of a few de- 

 " scriptions which were extremely deficient, and of a small number of 

 *' copper-plates so badly executed as hardly to be discernible. In 



* See a special sketch of the Botanical Reform of Linn^us in the Jupplements annexed 

 -fc this work. 



" Ichthyology 



