CLASSIFICATION. 295 



99. Biological classifications illustrate well these phases, 

 through which classifications in general necessarily pass. 

 In early attempts to arrange organic beings in some sys- 

 tematic manner, we see at first, a guidance by conspicuous 

 and simple characters, and a tendency towards arrangement 

 in linear order. In successively later attempts, we see 

 more regard paid to combinations of characters which are 

 essential but often inconspicuous ; and a gradual abandon- 

 ment of a linear arrangement for an arrangement in di- 

 vergent groups and re-diyergent sub-groups. 



In the popular mind, plants are still classed under the 

 heads of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbs ; and this serial classing 

 according to the single attribute of magnitude, swayed the 

 earliest observers. They would have thought it absurd to 

 call a bamboo, thirty feet high, a kind of grass ; and would 

 have been incredulous if told that the HartVtongue should 

 be placed in the same great division with the Tree-ferns. 

 The zoological classifications that were current before Ka- 

 tural History became a science, had divisions similarly super- 

 ficial and simple. Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Creeping-things, 

 are names of groups marked off from one another by con- 

 spicuous differences of appearance and modes of life crea- 

 tures that walk and run, creatures that fly, creatures that live 

 in the water, creatures that crawl. And these groups w T ere 

 thought of in the order of their importance. 



The first arrangements made by naturalists were based 

 either on single characters, or on very simple combinations 

 of characters. Describing plant-classifications, Lindley 

 says : " Bivinus invented, in 1690, a system depend- 

 ing upon the formation of the corolla ; Kamel, in 1693, 

 upon the fruit alone ; Magnol, in 1720, on the calyx and 

 corolla ; and finally, Linnaeus, in 1731, on variations in the 

 stamens and pistil." In this last system, which has been for 

 so long current as a means of identification, simple external 

 attributes are still depended on ; and an arrangement, in 

 great measure serial, is based on the degrees in which theae 



