me comprehending the variety of
birds with which they were acquainted, than on such principles of
reasoning as we have now been considering, the proper inference from
which, as we have seen, is destructive of the foundation of Mr S.'s
solution. Here, it may be remarked, it is somewhat unfortunate that we
cannot depend implicitly on Captain Cook's account as to the words in
which the islanders conveyed the notions we have been commenting on;
because, as the reader will find at the end of this section, these
people, who, whatever rank they may be allowed to hold as logicians,
were at all events very dexterous thieves, stole the memorandum book in
which Mr Anderson had recorded a specimen of their language. But
admitting Mr S.'s suppositions, it then may be shewn, that not only the
sheep and the goats, but also the horses and cows, considered, in the
words of Mr S., as _new animals_, would have been referred by these
islanders to the same genus, and therefore considered as birds. The
circumstance of their greater size, or, indeed, any other discernible
difference, cannot here be pleaded as exceptive, without in reality
abandoning the principles on which the solution is constructed. On the
whole, perhaps, it may seem more correct to imagine, that these
islanders were struck with some fanciful and distant resemblance to
certain birds they were acquainted with, from which they hastily
inferred identity of nature, notwithstanding some very visible
discrepancies; whereas the remarkable dissimilarity betwixt the new
quadrupeds and those they were previously acquainted with, impressed
their minds with the notion of complete contrariety. In other words,
they concluded, from the unlikeness, that these animals were neither
dogs nor hogs, and, from the resemblance, that they were birds. It is
erroneous to say, with Cook, that there is not the most distant
similitude between a sheep or goat, and any winged animal. For the
classifications adopted in every system of natural history, proceed
upon the discovery of still more remote resemblances among the objects
of the science, than such as may be noticed in the present case; and it
will almost always be found, that there is greater difficulty in
ascertaining differences amongst those objects which are allied, than
similarity amongst those which are unconnected. The facility with which
ideas are associated in the mind, as Mr S. informs us, p. 295, is very
different in different individuals