AND BLACK-BILLED AUK. 
9 
select in the infancy of that science which his genius and 
industry so surprisingly advanced. Hence it happened 
that, in zoology, as in botany, the attention was perpe- 
tually in search of some one or two characters which, it 
was presumed, must necessarily distinguish each indivi- 
dual species. In birds, for instance, the colour of the plu- 
mage, especially of certain parts, as the tips of the pri- 
mary quill- feathers, the tints of the iris, of the bill, feet, 
or peculiarity of habits, without noting the causes of diver- 
sity, were each separately held to be immutable specific 
distinctions. 
It seemed to be forgotten, that it is seldom by one dif- 
ference, but an assemblage of many, that nature marks 
specific distinctions; and had this been more frequently 
kept in view, we should have had less now to unlearn in 
some of the most interesting and apparently simple walks 
of natural history. 
BuFFON and his followers adopted an opposite, but more 
erroneous, course, — preferring vivacity and eloquence of 
description to conciseness and accuracy of systematic ar- 
rangement ; and their labours are conspicuous chiefly for 
the elegance of their style. 
The modern French school seems peculiarly to have dis- 
tinguished itself by the variety of its divisions in the higher 
departments of classification ; and n tendency to excessive 
refinement of nomenclature has perhaps been too frequent 
in their writings. Authors on classification have outstrip- 
ped the progress of observers on species, and, amidst the 
multiplicity of their subdivisions, seem sometimes to have 
lost sight of one of their chief objects — the discovery and 
accurate delineation of species. But it is still to this school, 
next to that of Linnaeus, to which zoology owes most of 
its interest and accuracy. The illustrious Cuvter has en- 
nobled and exalted it to the rank in the scale of knowledprt 
