Note 1090 — Chapter VII

Mr. Swainson (Geography and Classification of Animals, p. 170) complains, strangely enough, that Cuvier ‘rejects the more plain and obvious characters which every one can see, and which had been so happily employed by Linnæus, and makes the differences between these groups to depend upon circumstances which no one but an anatomist can understand.’ See also p. 173: ‘characters which, however good, are not always comprehensible, except to the anatomist.’ (Compare Hodgson on the Ornithology of Nepal, in Asiatic Researches, vol. xix. p. 179, Calcutta, 1836.) In other words, this is a complaint that Cuvier attempted to raise zoology to a science, and, therefore, of course, deprived it of some of its popular attractions, in order to invest it with other attractions of a far higher character. The errors introduced into the natural sciences by relying upon observation instead of experiment, have been noticed by many writers; and by none more judiciously than M. Saint Hilaire in his Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. i. p. 98.