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REVIEWS AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS. 
I. Dr Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Natural History. 1 . On the 
Geography and Classification of Animals. By W. SWAINSON, 
Esq 2. Classification of Quadrupeds. By W. SWAINSON, Esq. 
12mo. London, Longman & Co. 1836. 
IN no department of science has a greater or more decided advance 
and improvement taken place than in that of Zoology. We speak 
more particularly of what has occurred in our own country, and, we 
may add, within our own recollection. This, we think, must be 
admitted and apparent to whoever looks with an unprejudiced eye 
at the imposing and lofty station it now occupies as a science, and 
the mode in which the investigation of it is conducted, as compared 
with its state some fifteen or twenty years ago, when languishing 
under the trammels of artificial system, and pursued on principles 
neither philosophic nor in consonance with nature. It is no longer, 
Mr Swainson observes, and we rejoice he thinks himself justified in 
making the observation, *' It is no longer a study of names or of 
crude technicalities, but, like all other branches of physical science, 
is become the subject of philosophical investigation, and capable in 
all its details of similar proof, by inductive and analogical reasoning. 
For this improved state of our favourite science we are principally 
indebted, and with pride we make the assertion, to the labours and 
philosophic views of British naturalists ; for though we are willing 
and anxious to give our due tribute of praise and grateful acknow- 
ledgments to Continental zoologists for their researches and disco- 
veries, and are even inclined to believe that the " Regne Animal" of 
the illustrious Cuvier, although that work may have failed in its 
professed object, the classification of the various objects of the ani- 
mal kingdom according to their organization, if it did not actually 
first give the proper direction to zoological investigation, at least 
