526 REMARKS UPON ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



history at the present day, what an instructive and innocent amusement 

 it affords the people, and the salutary and moral benefits they are likely 

 to derive from it, it becomes a subject as well deserving of the attention 

 of a government as many other matters which have obtained their inter- 

 ference. Government, however, has hitherto done so little to forward 

 science, that naturalists must not expect that natural history will, at 

 any time, be favoured with its patronage. " Legislators," says Fell, 

 when describing the museums of Holland, " are not often philosophers ; 

 and while the wealth of nations is exhausted for the destruction of the 

 human species, small are the sums that are expended for the advance- 

 ment of useful knowledge*." 



As we have considered the subject of nomenclature, let us take a 

 general view of systems of classification. The system which first 

 deserves attention is that which arranges animals in agreement with 

 the connection subsisting between their forms and structures. 



The popular and favourite notion that the Creator has purposely con- 

 nected his creatures, by bonds of assimilation, to one another, thus 

 constituting what is usually termed the " Chain in Creation," and that 

 he has designedly made a gentle and easy gradation from the first link 

 of which this is composed, down to the last, has always appeared to me 

 nothing better than a mere fancy. The object of this chain, and also of 

 the gradation in its links, it is said, was the exhibition of order instead 

 of confusion. It must be presumption in any man to suppose himself 

 qualified to explain the purposes of the Creator. Whence did we imbibe 

 our notions of order but from Nature ; the only source from which it 

 was possible for us to have imbibed them. Consequently, had the 

 whole economy of nature been very different, even quite the reverse 

 of what it at present is, our notions of order would have varied accord- 

 ingly, yet they would have been in unison with all around us f. The 

 creation must always appear to us the " ne plus ultra'* of perfection, 

 because our minds cannot conceive anything more perfect than that 

 which our senses can comprehend, and nothing can be comprehended by 

 our senses but that which exists in nature. To suppose, however, that 

 the said chain was designedly formed, is not more probable than to 

 suppose that it was unintentional ; for had the various animals and plants 

 been formed of any other shape whatever, yet still it would have been 

 observable that each individual bore a nearer resemblance, in certain 

 particulars, to another than it did to the rest, and thus would successive 



* Fell's Tour through Batavia, p. 90. 

 4- This is a remark to me equally novel as it is profound and just.— Ed. 



