THE QUARTERLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
APRIL, 1877. 
I. THE BALANCE OF NATURE.* 
HAT naturalist does not look back to his first perusal 
of Waterton’s works as one of the most agreeable 
reminiscences of his boyhood ? Even now, not- 
withstanding the wonderful transformation which Natural 
History has undergone, the “ Wanderings”and the “Essays” 
retain their old charm unimpaired. If we attempt to analyse 
the merits of Waterton we cannot, indeed, regard him as a 
systematist. His chief attempt in that direction, the arrange- 
ment of the Quadrumana, formerly so called, into four groups, 
— the tail-less, or apes ; the short-tailed, or baboons ; the 
ordinary long-tailed monkeys of both hemispheres ; and, 
lastly, the prehensile-tailed species of South America, — 
might almost be regarded as a satire on the classifications 
of some of the older naturalists based upon a consideration 
of some single organ. If taken seriously, it has the striking 
demerit of breaking up the platyrrhine family into two 
groups, in defiance alike of morphological and of geogra- 
phical considerations. But if unable or unwilling to in- 
augurate a “system ” of his own, Waterton’s clear incisive 
common sense refused to accept the Swainsonian doctrines, 
which reigned supreme during many years of his life. 
“Who knows,” says he, “ but that some closet-naturalist 
may account for these alar spurs of the camichi through 
the medium of that very useful and important discovery, 
the quinary system. Thus, for example, suppose these 
said spurs were once normal or typical on the legs ; but by 
some rather obscure process, having become aberrant, they 
* Game Preservers and Bird Preservers. By G. F. Morant. London : 
Longmans and Co. Essays on Natural History. By Charles Waterton. 
Edited by Norman Moore, B.A. London: F. Warne and Co, 
VOL. VIL (N.S.) 
L 
