XXX 
LINNiEAN SYSTEM. 
in which the works of creation appear in the form of petty, muti- 
lated scraps, out of all proportion with the originals ; and each and 
all of their descriptions may be easily proved to be grossly inaccu- 
rate, inasmuch as they are, systematically and by design, deficient 
in the chief details that are of any possible interest to a student. 
It would be superfluous to do more than refer to the preceding quo- 
tations respecting the grebe’s nest, and the bank swallow, to prove 
my position beyond all controversy, though I am well prepared to 
hear it stigmatised as an unproved assertion. We cannot open a 
scientific journal, an encyclopaedia, ora volume of the transactions 
of any of our learned societies, without finding countless proofs of 
these facts. What is no less surprising, those writers who have 
ventured to inveigh against this, often show that they are irresist- 
ibly swept along the stream of fashion, by inditing what are called 
Monographs, in rigid accordance with Linnaean barrenness of 
idea and of deduction: A wordish description,” to use the 
language of Sir Philip Sidney, which doth neither strike, 
pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul.”* Such a procedure 
unquestionably drags down philosophy from the pure eminence 
on which she sits, to the very dust of the plain. f “Those,” it has 
been justly said, “ who employ themselves in disguising and 
degrading science by cacophonous nomenclature, and a parade of 
barbarous Latinity, which fools think learning, are entitled to 
reprobation and contempt. There are many such in France, and 
some among ourselves, — great men in their little circles: they do 
well to make the most of this, for they may rest assured, that how- 
ever high they may rank in their own estimation, or in that of 
their coteries^ the world neither knows nor cares any thing about 
them.” J 
It grieves me to see several living naturalists of splendid talent, 
both for observation, philosophic deduction, and eloquent narra- 
tive, frittering away their time upon nomenclature, monographs, 
and Linnsean indices of nondescript species, which any subaltern 
attendant in a museum could execute sufficiently well ; and when 
* Defence of Poesy, p. 19, Gray’s ed. Oxford, 1829. 
f Liidit istis animus non proficit, et pliilosopliiam a fastigio deducit in planum. 
— Cicero. 
I Loudon’s Mag. of Nat. Hist. i. 370. 
