The natural arrangement and relations of the family of flycatchers, or muscicapidae / Illustrated by thirty-three coloured plates, with portrait and memoir of Baron Haller.

Swainson, William, 1789-1855.

Date:: 1838

Credit: The natural arrangement and relations of the family of flycatchers, or muscicapidae / Illustrated by thirty-three coloured plates, with portrait and memoir of Baron Haller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$study of the animal economy. Irritability is a pro- perty entirely different from all those which were knmvn before in the body; and being essential to aU animals, as perhaps likewise to all regetahles, it udll henceforth be justly reckoned amongst the principal qualities of organized bodies. It must appear very surprising, and at the same time not a little mortifying to manldnd, that a property which, as Zimmerman says, constitutes perhaps the very basis of life, should have escaped the eyes of all who imagined themselves to he observers, and some of whom were actually such. Perhaps it would not be impossible to assign the reason for this, but all that we shall say is, that it resembles other instances of a similar kind: attraction, and the weight and elasticity of the air, showed themselves to the senses every day, but it required a Toricelli and a Newton to illustrate them. As the whole animal economy revolves on this principle, it is easy to imagine what a change this discovery must produce. To England we owe philosophy, and to Switzerland physiulog}', the immovable basis of which is iivitahility.” Much praise is undoubtedly due to those, who, neglecting their oivn aggrandizement, endeavour to augment the popularity of others by introducing their works to notice, whether as translations from a foreign language, or by hestouing commendation and publicity on memoirs calculated to promote tlie progress of science, or in revi\Tng discoveries which run a risk of being forgotten. This labour, less brilliant than useful, is one of those to Avhich Haller$