THE POET GRAY 
only to the understanding of the course of his days, but even 
more to a just appreciation of his character and his acquisitions. 
The first volume of the Systema Naturae^ treating of the Ani- 
mal Kingdom, has eight hundred and twenty-four pages; the 
second, treating of Plants, contains five hundred and sixty-six. 
Gray had both volumes interleaved, thus doubling their size. He 
divided the first into two parts, one comprising the portion deal- 
ing with Mammalia, Birds, Amphibia and Fishes, the other the 
portion treating of Insects and Vermes. This first part of the 
first volume is of three hundred and thirty-eight printed pages, 
so that interleaved it consists of six hundred and seventy-six 
pages in all, of which six hundred and twenty -two contain notes 
by Gray ; of the fifty-four which have no notes, twenty-eight are 
of the general introduction, six are occupied with the lists of 
genera and species, while eleven only belong to the descriptive 
text, and most of these are in the section of Pisces. The notes 
vary greatly in character and in extent, — some consist of mere 
marks of reference, but most of them are of considerable length, 
often occupying a large part or even the whole of a page. Their 
main object was to add information, gathered chiefly from books 
but largely also from his own observation, to the brief scientific 
descriptions of Linnaeus. Some of the notes are in English, but 
most of them are in Latin, with numerous citations in French or 
Italian. Gray wrote Latin with ease, and with mastery of a large 
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