XXXlll 
THE QUINARY SYSTEM. 
<V 
THE QUINARY SYSTEM AND MODERN DOCTRINE OF TYPES, 
AFFINITIES, AND ANALOGIES. 
It was a fancy of Darwin’s, borrowed from Epicurus,* tliat 
animals were produced by some inexplicable cliemistry, from a 
single and simple filament or tlireadlet of matter, wliicli, by its 
efforts to procure nourishment, lengthened out parts of its body 
into arms and other members. When some of these supposed 
threadlets of matter again had, in process of time, improved 
themselves into birds, the different forms of their bills were, he 
says, in the same way gradually acquired and hereditarily trans- 
mitted, as were the long legs of some water fowl, {Grallatores^ 
Illiger,) from the endeavours of the birds to elevate their bodies 
above the water in which they waded, f Supposing for a moment 
this wild theory to be true, we might, in forming a systematic 
catalogue of animals, divide them into groups according to the 
similarity of their improved organs ; for example, the long-legged 
wading birds, just mentioned, in one group, and the swimming 
birds with webbed feet [Natatores^ Illiger) in another; which 
two groups we might again for convenience subdivide into subor- 
dinate groups, such as the snipes, [ScolojmcidcE^ Vigors,) the 
rails, (llallidcB^ Leach,) the ducks, [Anatidoi^ Vigors,) and the 
gulls, (Larid<jB, Leach,) which, according to this fanciful hypo- 
thesis, are all more nearly or distantly related or akin to each 
other, as they are more advanced in the improvement of their 
organs, compared with the original tlireadlet that had none. 
The Quinary System, under consideration, while it professes to 
reject this strange doctrine, at the same time adopts its very lan- 
guage in the most unequivocal manner.:!: “ Though nature,” says 
Mr. Vigors, with peculiar elegance of illustration, ‘‘ no where ex- 
hibits an absolute division between her various groups, she yet 
displays sufficiently distinctive characters to enable us to arrange 
* Lucretius, De Natura Rerum, v. 795, &c. 
f Darwin, Zooiiomia, sect, xxxix. 3d edit. London. 1801. See also La- 
marck, Pliilosophie Zoologique : and Robinet, De la Nature, vol. 5, passim. 
+ See MacLeay, Horae Entomologicae, and Linn. Trans, xiv. 46 ; Vigors, 
Linn. Trans, xiv. 398 ; Zoological Journ. passim; and Gardens and Menag. 
of the Zool. Soc. Del. passim. 
c 
