lii 
THE QUINARY SYSTEM. 
then make of the two legs of birds, and the fourteen feet of the 
wood-louse family, ( OniscidcB, Leach, ) or the two hundred feet 
of the millepede, {Julus. terrestris, Linn^us) ? In order to re- 
duce these to five, he must have recourse to all the fanciful analo- 
gies above exemplified from GeolFroy St. Hilaire and Savigny. 
Should I be told it is not to organs but to groups the Jives apply, 
I could easily show that the published Quinary groups strikingly 
exhibit the baseless character of the system. For example, the 
first circle of birds has not as ^et five but three members ; the 
cuckoos are ranked with climbers, though they do not climb, and 
the perchers include larks that do not perch, and exclude phea- 
sants and herons, which do.* Hence, the circular groups of fives 
thus inaccurately constructed must be given up. Were any of 
these numbers indeed universal in nature, we should not have one 
naturalist (Dr. Fleming) fixing upon^zi;e; others (Oken, Cuvier, 
and Fries) upon four ; others (MacLeay and Vigors) upon five; 
and others upon seven. 
‘‘ The number five,” says Kirby, which Mr. MacLeay 
assumes for one basis of his system as consecrated in nature, 
seems to me to yield to the number seven^ which is consecrated 
both in nature and scripture. Metaphysicians” [Paley]^ reckon 
seven principal operations of the mind ; musicians seven principal 
tones of music; and opticians seven primary colours.” :j: For this 
we may also give the great Class-icdl authority of Linnseus, who, 
we are told, if he had lived, intended to extend his five-fold 
division of classes, orders, genera, species, and varieties derived 
from the number of the human toes and fingers to seven, by 
adding legions and tribes, because the world was created in seven 
days. Locke mentions a musician of a similar cast of mind, who 
was of opinion that the world was created in seven days, because 
there are seven notes in music ! ! ! § The Israelites indeed were 
commanded to reckon time by sevens in memorial of the creation, || 
and all the commentators from Philo, Cyprian, and the venerable 
Bede, down to Daubuz, Faber, and Penn, agree that the Hebrew 
* Linn. Trans, xiv. and Zool. Joiirn. ii. 392, et seq. 
t Paley’s Lectures, MSS. X to Entomol. iii. 15, Note. 
§ Quoted in Brown’s Lect. on Philos, i. 172. 
11 Woodhouse, Annot. on the Apocalypse, p. 58. 
