(131.) Nomenclature, then, is, in itself, undoubtedly an important part of science, as it prevents our being lost in a wilderness of particulars, and involved in inextricable confusion. Happily, in those great branches of science where the objects of classification are most numerous, and the necessity for a clear and convenient nomenclature most pressing, no very great difficulty in its establishment is felt. The very multitude of the objects themselves affords the power of grouping them in subordinate classes, sufficiently well defined to admit of names, and these again into others, whose names may become attached to, or compounded with, the former, till at length the particular species is identified. The facility with which the botanist, the entomologist, or the chemist, refers by name to any individual object in his science shows what may be accomplished in this way when characters are themselves distinct. In other branches, however, considerable difficulty is experienced. This arises mostly where the species to be distinguished are separated from each other chiefly by difference in degree, of certain qualities common to all, and where the degrees shade into each other insensibly. Perhaps such subjects can hardly be considered ripe for systematic nomenclature; and that the attempt to apply it ought only to be partial, embracing such groups and parcels of individuals as agree in characters evidently natural and generic, and leaving the remainder under trivial or provisional denominations, till they shall be better known, and capable of being scientifically grouped.