systems, even the most approved, are constantly exhibiting; the reason of which is, that, in thus tracing approaches in his mind, he will continually discover an individual completely surrounded by others, each of which partakes of its peculiarities, not only in a different degree, but in a different mode; and thus he will perceive the character on which his attention has been fixed, ramifying in all directions. Now no system, hitherto suggested, will at all cope with this; it has been the plan, and I imagine the fault of all our systems, that they are so constructed as to be incapable of receiving a character from, or imparting it to, more than a single individual: hence they never can possess capacity sufficient to exhibit those endless chains of relation which the mind so luxuriates in tracing. The want of such a system has been, I believe, universally acknowledged, and should my humble endeavour even prepare the way for its establishment, and act the mere part of a herald to proclaim its approach, I shall not only be satisfied, but delighted. I cannot here plough my toilsome track through the wild waste of systems and speculations, which have embarrassed, rather than assisted, natural history during the last hundred years; my aim will be more to make myself understood than comment on the merits of others, except as I can lay them under contribution to enhance my own. Previously to the publication of Mr. MacLeay's _Horæ Entomologicæ_, it appears to have been an opinion universally prevalent, that there existed in nature a regularly graduated scale of beings, beginning with man as the most perfect, and terminating in the least perfect creature known to possess life. One ingenious author had varied a little from this theory by allowing a double series to nature's works, which commencing on a level with the most perfect animal and most perfect plant, descended gradually and approached as they descended, until they met in those jelly-like substances which seem yet to hover between the two kingdoms, puzzling naturalists by their proximity to both--the system thus assuming the shape of the letter V.[3] [3] The system of Lamarck. However convenient for the formation of a catalogue, or the arrangement of a cabinet, such a system may be; and however inconvenient or impracticable any other conceivable plan may appear, I think few will concur in imagining man capable of, or warranted in, thus setting up limits and boundary-marks to the works and power of his Maker; for the next step, as a matter of course, would be the application of similar restrictions to infinite space, which he might as reasonably expect to bring under his sapient admeasurement.