2 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. 



in particular, as it would afford a desirable opportunity of 

 establishing a standard of comparison between the changes 

 animals undergo during their growth, and the permanent 

 characters of full-grown individuals of other types; and, 

 perhaps, of showing also what other points beside struc- 

 ture might with advantage be considered in ascertaining 

 the manifold relations of animals to one another, and to 

 the world in which they live, upon which the natural sys- 

 tem may be founded. 



In considering these various topics, I shall of necessity 

 have to discuss many questions bearing upon the very 

 origin of organized beings, and to touch upon many points 

 now under discussion among scientific men. I shall, how- 

 ever, avoid controversy as much as possible, and only try- 

 to give the results of my own studies and meditations 

 in as clear a manner as I possibly can in the short space 

 of an essay like this. 



There is no question in Natural History on which more 

 diversified opinions are entertained, than on that of clas- 

 sification ; not that naturalists disagree as to the necessity 

 of some sort of arrangement in describing animals or 

 plants; for since nature has become the object of special 

 studies, it has been the universal aim of all naturalists to 

 arrange the objects of their investigations in the most 

 natural order possible. Even Buffon, who began the pub- 

 lication of his great Natural History by denying the exist- 

 ence in nature of anything like a system, closed his work 

 by grouping the birds according to certain general features 

 exhibited in common by many of them. It is true that 

 authors have differed in their estimation of the characters 

 on which their different arrangements are founded; and it is 

 equally true that they have not viewed their arrangements 

 in the same light, some having plainly acknowledged the 



