as ifidicating Affinities of Species, 407 



verse, and tends to preserve the balance of organic being, 

 and, removed whence (as is somewhere well remarked by 

 Mudie), a plant or animal is little else than a " disjointed 

 fragment." 



Systematists, with few exceptions, err most grossly in 

 imagining that allied species have been created in direct re- 

 ference to each other (as members of a sort of cabinet 

 system of even proportions) rather than to the localities 

 they indigenously frequent, to the office each was ordained to 

 fulfil in the universal, or adaptive, system. One would have 

 supposed that the various facts which geology has brought 

 to light would have sufficed to undeceive them in this 

 particular. It cannot be too often repeated, that, upon what- 

 ever plan a species may be organised, its true relation (the 

 reason for its existence at all) is solely connected with its 

 indigenous locality: else, why should so many thousand species 

 have ceased to be, the particular circumstances under which 

 they were appointed to live no longer requiring their presence ? 

 To expect, indeed, for a single moment, that, in any isolated 

 class or division of organisms, a perfect system of another 

 kind could obtain, harmonising in all points, and true in the 

 detail to any particular number, appears to me (even supposing 

 that none of the species were now extinct, and that we knew 

 all that are at present existing), prima facie, a manifest illu- 

 sion. Species are distributed over the earth, wherever the 

 most scanty means of subsistence for them are to be found ; 

 and their organisation is always beautifully and wonderfully 

 adapted for obtaining it under whatever circumstances it may 

 exist : just, therefore, as the surface varies, so do its pro- 

 ductions and its inhabitants ; and there is no locality, or, ap- 

 parently, even vegetable production, so peculiar, but species 

 are found upon it especially organised to find their subsistence 

 chiefly or wholly there. The very underground lake has its 

 own peculiar inhabitants ; for the wondrous Proteus there 

 revels in regions of everlasting night : of course happy in its 

 existence as the bird that cleaves the free air, or as the lion 

 that exults in his conquering prowess. Ponder this well ; and 

 it is clear, that upon these grounds alone all quinary imaginings 

 must at once fall to the ground. 



The more deeply, indeed, I consider the quinary theory 

 (now advocated by so many talented naturalists) in all its 

 bearings, the less consistent does it appear to me with reason 

 and common sense; the more thoroughly am I convinced of 

 its utter fancifulness and misleading tendency. Nothing in 

 this world is without its particular and definite use, which 

 observation, in time, generally contrives to discover : but what 



