octavo volumes (or parts, as they are called). Giebel's Thesaurus
Giebel.
ornithologiae, also in three volumes, published between
1872 and 1877, is a slight advance, but both works have
been completely superseded by the British Museum Catalogue of
Birds, the twenty-seventh and final volume of which was published
in 1895, and by the compact and invaluable British Museum
Hand-List, the four volumes of which were completed by Dr R. B. Sharpe
in 1903.
It may be convenient here to deal with the theory of the Quinary System, which was promulgated with great zeal by its Quinary system. upholders during the end of the first and early part of the second quarter of the 19th century, and for some years seemed likely to carry all before it. The success it gained was doubtless due in some degree to the difficulty which most men had in comprehending it, for it was enwrapped in alluring mystery, but more to the confidence with which it was announced as being the long-looked-for key to the wonders of creation, since its promoters did not hesitate to term it the discovery of “the Natural System,” though they condescended, by way of explanation to less exalted intellects than their own, to allow it the more moderate appellation of the Circular or Quinary System.
A comparison of the relation of created beings to a number of intersecting circles is as old as the days of Nieremberg, who in 1635 wrote (Historia naturae, lib. iii. cap. 3)—“Nullus hiatus est, nulla fractio, nulla dispersion formarum, invicem connexa sunt velut annulus annulo”; but it is almost clear that he was thinking only of a chain. In 1806 Fischer de Waldheim, in his Tableaux synoptiques de zoognosie (p. 181), quoting Nieremberg, extended his figure of speech, and, while justly deprecating the notion that the series of forms belonging to any particular group of creatures—the Mammalia was that whence he took his instance—could be placed in a straight line, imagined the various genera to be arrayed in a series of contiguous circles around Man as a centre. Though there is nothing to show that Fischer intended, by what is here said, to do anything else than illustrate more fully the marvellous interconnexion of different animals, or that he attached any realistic meaning to his metaphor, his words were eagerly caught up by the Macleay. prophet of the new faith. This was William Sharpe Macleay, a man of education and real genius, who in 1819 and 1821 brought out a work under the title of Horae Entomologicae, which was soon after hailed by Vigors as containing a new Vigors. revelation, and applied by him to ornithology in some “Observations on the Natural Affinities that connect the Orders and Families of Birds,” read before the Linnean Society of London in 1823, and afterwards published in its Transactions (xiv. pp. 395-517). In the following year Vigors returned to the subject in some papers published in the recently established Zoological Journal, and found an energetic con disciple and coadjutor in Swainson. Swainson, who, for more than a dozen years—to the end, in fact, of his career as an ornithological writer—was instant in season and out of season in pressing on all his readers the views he had, through Vigors, adopted from Macleay, though not without some modification of detail if not of principle. What these views were it would be manifestly improper for a sceptic to state except in the terms of a believer. Their enunciation must therefore be given in Swainson's own words, though it must be admitted that space cannot be found here for the diagrams, which it was alleged were necessary for the right understanding of the theory. This theory, as originally propounded by Macleay, was said by Swainson in 1835 (Geogr. and Classific. of Animals, p. 202) to have consisted of the following propositions:[1]—
“1. That the series of natural animals is continuous, forming, as it were, a circle; so that, upon commencing at any one given point, and thence tracing all the modifications of structure, we shall be imperceptibly led, after passing through numerous forms, again to the point from which we started.
“2. That no groups are natural which do not exhibit, or show an evident tendency to exhibit, such a circular series.
“3. That the primary divisions of every large group are ten, five of which are composed of comparatively large circles, and five of smaller: these latter being termed osculant, and being intermediate between the former, which they serve to connect.
“4. That there is a tendency in such groups as are placed at the opposite points of a circle of affinity ‘to meet each other.’
“5. That one of the five larger groups into which every natural circle is divided ‘bears a resemblance to all the rest, or, more strictly speaking, consists of types which represent those of each of the four other groups, together with a type peculiar to itself.’ ”
As subsequently modified by Swainson (tom. cit. pp. 224, 225), the foregoing propositions take the following form:—
“I. That every natural series of beings, in its progress from a given point, either actually returns, or evinces a tendency to return, again to that point, thereby forming a circle.
“II. The primary circular divisions of every group are three actually, or five apparently.
“III. The contents of such a circular group are symbolically (or analogically) represented by the contents of all other circles in the animal kingdom.
“IV. That these primary divisions of every group are characterized by definite peculiarities of form, structure and economy, which, under diversified modifications, are uniform throughout the animal kingdom, and are therefore to be regarded as the primary types of nature.
“V. That the different ranks or degrees of circular groups exhibited in the animal kingdom are nine in number, each being involved within the other.”
Though, as above stated, the theory here promulgated owed its temporary success chiefly to the extraordinary assurance and pertinacity with which it was urged upon a public generally incapable of understanding what it meant, that it received some support from men of science must be admitted. A “circular system” was advocated by the eminent botanist Fries, and the views of Macleay met with the partial approbation of the celebrated entomologist Kirby, while at least as much may be said of the imaginative Oken, whose mysticism far surpassed that of the Quinarians. But it is obvious to every one who nowadays indulges in the profitless pastime of studying their writings that, as a whole, they failed in grasping the essential difference between homology (or “affinity,” as they generally termed it) and analogy—though this difference had been fully understood and set forth by Aristotle himself—and, moreover, that in seeking for analogies on which to base their foregone conclusions they were often put to hard shifts. Another singular fact is that they often seemed to be totally unaware of the tendency if not the meaning of some of their own expressions: thus Macleay could write, and doubtless in perfect good faith (Trans. Linn. Society, xvi. p. 9, note), “Naturalists have nothing to do with mysticism, and but little with a priori reasoning.” Yet his followers, if not he himself, were ever making use of language in the highest degree metaphorical, and were always explaining facts Fleming. in accordance with preconceived opinions. Fleming, already the author of a harmless and extremely orthodox Philosophy of Zoology, pointed out in 1829 in the Quarterly Review (xli. pp. 302-327) some of the fallacies of Macleay's method, and in return provoked from him a reply, in the form of a letter addressed to Vigors On the Dying Struggle of the Dichotomous System, couched in language the force of which no one even at the present day can deny, though to the modern naturalist its invective power contrasts ludicrously with the strength of its ratiocination. But, confining ourselves to what is here our special business, it is to be remarked that perhaps the heaviest blow dealt at these strange doctrines was that delivered by Rennie, who, in an edition of Montagu's Ornithological Dictionary (pp. xxxiii.-lv.), published in 1831 and again issued in 1833, attacked the Quinary System, and especially its application to ornithology by Vigors and Swainson, in a way that might perhaps have demolished it, had not the author mingled with his undoubtedly sound reason much that is foreign to any question with which a naturalist, as such, ought to deal—though that herein he was only following the example of one of his opponents, who had constantly treated the subject in like manner, is to be allowed. This did not hinder Swainson, who had succeeded in getting the ornithological portion of the first zoological work ever published at the expense of the British government (namely, the Fauna Boreali-Americana) executed in accordance with his own opinions, from maintaining them more strongly than ever in several of the volumes treating of Natural History which he contributed to the Cabinet Cyclopaedia—among others that from which we have just given some extracts—and in what may be deemed the culmination in England of the Quinary System, the volume of the “Naturalist's Library” on The Natural Arrangement and History of Flycatchers, published in 1838, of which unhappy performance mention has already been made in this present work (vol. x. p. 584, note). This seems to have been his last attempt; for, two years later, his Bibliography of Zoology shows little trace of his favourite theory, though nothing he had uttered in its support was retracted. Appearing almost simultaneously with this work, an article by Strickland (Mag. Nat. Strickland. History, ser. 2, iv. pp. 219-226) entitled Observations upon the Affinities and Analogies of Organized Beings administered to the theory a shock from which it never recovered, though attempts were now and then made by its adherents to revive it; and, even ten years or more later, Kaup, one of the few foreign ornithologists who had embraced Quinary principles, was by mistaken kindness allowed to publish Monographs of the Birds-of-Prey (Jardine's Contributions to Ornithology, 1849, pp. 68-75, 96-121; 1850, pp. 51-80; 1851, pp. 119-130; 1852, pp. 103-122; and Trans. Zool. Society, iv. pp. 201-260), in which its absurdity reached the climax.
The mischief caused by this theory of a Quinary System was very great, but was chiefly confined to Britain, for (as has been
- ↑ We prefer giving them here in Swainson's version, because he seems to have set them forth more clearly and concisely than Macleay ever did, and, moreover, Swainson's application of them to ornithology—a branch of science that lay outside of Macleay's proper studies—appears to be more suitable to the present occasion.
