THE QUINARY SYSTEM. xlv 
again lie speaks of “ the great revolution which the publication 
of these principles has effected in Zoology.”* “ He has opened,” 
say Kirby and Spence, “ to the philosopher, the moralist, and 
the divine, that hitherto closed door by which our first parents 
and their immediate descendants entered the temple of nature, and 
studied the symbols of knowledge that were there presented to 
them.”f The author himself talks in the same lofty vein. The 
nature of the difference,” says he, which exists in natural history, 
between affinity and analogy, was, I believe, first discovered in 
studying Lamellicon beetles; and, in the year 1819, when I pub- 
lished that discovery, &c.” In the year 1817,f I detected a 
quinary arrangement.” § Again, “ I cannot indeed be blind to 
the changes it” [the Horse Entomologicse] “has effected in the 
English school of Zoology. These are evident on the slightest 
comparison of the Zoological works published in England previous 
and subsequent to 1822.” 1| 
I am sorry I cannot join such excellent men and able naturalists 
as Mr. Kirby and Mr, Vigors, in these high eulogiums on the 
system of their friend, whose extensive learning and superior 
talents I am most willing to acknowledge ; but I must confess 
that the existence of this “great revolution” is much more novel 
to me than the alleged discovery, which is by no means new or 
peculiar in all its bearings, though I am thoroughly convinced, 
from the statements I have so amply quoted, that it is not only 
fanciful but pernicious. As to the originality or novelty of the 
discovery claimed, (though if the system be admitted to be arti- 
ficial, invention would be the correct term,) it will not be difficult 
to show that the claim has little, if any, foundation. “ I disco- 
vered^' says an able advocate of the system, “ as I advanced, that 
the larger or primary groups into which it” [the science of Orni- 
thology] “ arranged itself, were connected together by an unin- 
terrupted chain of affinities ; that this series or chain returned into 
itself, and that the groups of which it was composed, preserved. 
* Linn. Trans, vol. xiv. p. 398. 
t Tntrod. iv., 415. It is not a little singular tliat Mr. MacLeay liimself says 
that lie is here praised for what the authors did not understand. Dying Strug- 
gle, p. 26. 
X MacLeay, Linn. Trans, vol, xiv. p.49. §Ib.p. 62, jj Dying Struggle, p. 4. 
