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The Murray.# In 1829, along with a naturalist named Macleay, Sturt was again sent out to explore the interior, and on this occasion carried his portable boats to the Murrumbidgee, on which he embarked his party of eight convicts. They rowed with a will, and soon took the boat down the river beyond its junction with the Lachlan.
All natural groups of animals are, therefore, in the language of Mr. Macleay, CIRCULAR; and the possibility of throwing any supposed group into a circular arrangement is held as a decisive test of its being a real or natural one.
Then, after boiling the billy and eating some fearfully tough corned meat, we get into the boat again, hoist our sail, and land at the little township just after dark. Such was one of many similar day's sport on the Hastings, which, with the Bellinger, the Nambucca, the Macleay, and the Clarence, affords good fishing practically all the year round.
We can understand, on the above views, the very important distinction between real affinities and analogical or adaptive resemblances. Lamarck first called attention to this subject, and he has been ably followed by Macleay and others.
Macleay, a tribe living only upon putrid vegetable matter, and hiding themselves in their disgusting food, or in dark hollows of the earth, neither of these celebrated men suspected the absolute fact, elicited from our analogies of this group, that this very tribe constituted the sub-typical group of one of the primary divisions of coleopterous insects: nor had they any suspicion that, by the filthy habits and repulsive forms of these beetles, nature had intended that they should be types or emblems of hundreds of other groups, distinguished by peculiarities equally indicative of evil.
Loch Lomond Expedition. Wodrow Correspondence, p. 30. Also Reay's History of the Rebellion, p. 286. Macleay, p. 279. The memoirs of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, have been written in various forms, and with a great diversity of opinions.
Macleay, p. 181. See Trials, &c. p. 76. Tour to the Hebrides. Macleay. This account of what is called in history the "Loch Lomond Expedition," is taken from the Wodrow MSS. in the Advocate's Library in Edinburgh. Extracts from these MSS. have been printed by James Dennistoun, Esq., to whose work I am indebted for this narrative of Rob Roy's martial career. The Loch Lomond Expedition, p. 9.
This circumstance, however, did not in his opinion affect the case of the Mygale; and even as regards the Epeira, Mr. MacLeay, who witnessed the occurrence, was inclined to believe the instance to be accidental and exceptional; "an exception indeed so rare, that no other person had ever witnessed the fact." Subsequent observation has, however, served to sustain the story of Madame Merian.
The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour of its principal author, announces that, whether we take the whole animal kingdom, or any definite division of it, we shall find that we are examining a group of beings which is capable of being arranged along a series of close affinities, IN A CIRCULAR FORM, that is to say, starting from any one portion of the group, when it is properly arranged, we can proceed from one to another by minute gradations, till at length, having run through the whole, we return to the point whence we set out.
To the shapeless lump, demanding no pains, they all prefer the sphere, lovingly fashioned and calling for much manipulation, the globe which is the preeminent form and best-adapted for the preservation of energy, in the case of a sun and of a Dung-beetle's cradle alike. When Macleay gave the Sacred Beetle the name of Heliocantharus, the Black-beetle of the Sun, what had he in mind?
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