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Show xiv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. the Annulata, the Radiata, and many of the Insects and Crustacea is equally extensive. I have not deemed it necessary t~ publish it with the same detail ; but all my preparations are exposed in the Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy in the Jardin du Roi, and will serve hereafter for my Treatise on Anatomy. Another work of considerable labour, but whose proofs cannot be made so authentic, is the critical examination of species. I examined and verified all the figures adduced by authors, and as often as possible referred each to its true species, before making a chqice of those I have pointed out; it is from this verification alone, and never from the classification of preceding methodists, that I have referred to my subgenera the species that belong to them. Such is the reason, why no astonishment should be experienced on finding that such or such a genus of Gmelin is now divided and distributed even in different classes and divisions; that numerous nominal species are reduced to a single one, and that vulgar names are very differently applied. There is not a single one of these changes that I am not prepared to justify, .or of which the reader himself may not obtain the proof by recurring to the sources I have indicated. In order to diminish his trouble, I have been careful to select for each class a principal author, generally the richest in good original figures, and I quote secondary works only in those cases in which the former are silent, or where it was useful to establish some comparison, for the sake of confirm· ing synonymes. My subject could have been made to fill many volumes, but I considered it my duty to condense it, by imagining abridged means of publication. I have obtained these by gra· duated generalities ; by nev~r repeating for a species what could be said of a whole subgenus, nor for a genus what might be applied to an entire order, and so on, we arrive at the greatest possible economy of words. To this my endeavours have been, above ~II, particularly direeted, inasmach as this was the principal end of my work. It may be observed, PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XV however, that I have not employed many technical terms, and that I have endeavoured to communicate my ideas without that barbarous apparatus of factitious words, which, in the works of so many modern naturalists, prove so very repulsive. I cannot perceive, however, that I have thereby lost any thing in precision or clearness. I have been compelled, unfortunately, to introduce many new names, although r endeavoured as far as possible to preserve those of my predecessors; but the numerous subgenera I have established required these denominations; for in things so various the memory is not satisfied with numerical indications. I have selected them, so as either to convey some character, or among the common names which I have latinized, or finally after the example of Linnreus, from those of mythology, which are generally agreeable to the ear, and which we are far from having exhausted. . In naming sp_ecies, however, I would recommend employmg the substantive of the genus, and the trivial name only. The names of the subgenera are designed as a mere relief to the memory, when we wish to indicate these subdivisions in particular. Otherwise, as the subgenera, already very numerous, wiJI in the end become greatly multiplied, in consequence of having substantives continually to retain, we shall be in danger of losing the advantages of that binar•y nomenclature so happily imagined by Linnreus. It is the better to preserve it that I have dismembered, as little as possible, the genera of that illustrious reformer of science. Whenever the subgenera in which I divide them were not to be translated to different families, I have left them together under their former generic appellation. This was not only due to the memory of Linnreus, but it was necessary in order to preserve the mutual intelligence of the naturalists of different countries. The habit, naturally acquired in the study of naturha'sl ~ tory, of the mental classification of a great number of ideas . ' IS one o~ the advan~ges of that science that is seldom observed, and which, when It shall have been generally introduced into |