The high reputation which this great man has long held among the naturalists throughout the world, might readily perhaps preclude any encomium from our pen; since, to all lovers of natural sci∣ence, his name itself is eulogy, and will doubtless very long be inseparable from the idea of his ex∣traordinary merit. Might we, nevertheless, be indulged so far, we hope the following brief esti∣mate of his talents will be thought just, and easily deduced from an impartial view of his writings.Nature had, in an eminent manner, been liberal in the endowments of his mind. He seems to have been possessed of a lively imagination, corrected however by a strong judgment, and guided by the laws of system. Add to these, the most retentive memory, an unremitting industry, and the greatest perseverance in all his pursuits; as is evident from that continued vigour with which he prosecuted the design, that he appears to have formed so early in life, of totally reforming, and fabricating anew the whole science of natural history: and this fabric he raised, and gave to it a degree of perfection unknown before; and had moreover the un∣common felicity of living to see his own struc∣ture rise above all others, notwithstanding every discouragement its author at first laboured under, and the opposition it afterwards met with. Neither has any writer more cautiously avoided that com∣mon error of building his own fame on the ruin of another man's. He every where acknowledged the several merits of each author's system; and no man appears to have been more sensible of the par∣tial0