70 
MEMOIR OP LINNAEUS. 
superficially known to be trusted as a secure ground- 
work for geological speculation. 
Viewed as a Zoologist, Linnaeus was the first 
that gave a picture of the animal kingdom, em- 
bracing the whole range of beings that compose it. 
His classifications are ingenious, and chiefly founded 
on the organs of mastication, digestion, and lacta- 
tion ; in the form of the wings in birds ; on the 
absence or presence of elytra in insects. Nobody 
before him had succeeded so well in drawing the 
line of demarcation between animals and vege- 
tables ; no author had hitherto known how to em- 
ploy synoptical terms with so much brevity and 
precision. In creating a language for the Natural 
Sciences, he seemed to have prescribed boundaries 
which human ignorance could not pass, and to have 
fixed his definitions beyond the risk of miscon- 
ception. 
Some -writers have attempted to compare Lin- 
naeus with Aristotle and Buflfon ; others have ho- 
noured him nuth the title of the Northern Pliny 
and the second Dioscorides. Those parallels, how- 
ever, want analogy. To measure Linnaeus with 
other Naturalists, is to contrast Scott and Voltaire 
with other poets : these men, by the prodigious 
extent and variety of their works, stand aloof from 
all comparison. It may be possible to find an equal 
to Linnaeus as a botanist or a zoologist, or even to 
surpass him as a mineralogist ; but where is one to 
