196 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION 



Zoology more easy. I do not expect that it will; but if an attentive 

 consideration of Avhat I have stated in the preceding pages respecting 

 classification should lead to a more accurate investigation of all the 

 different relations existing among animals, and between them and 

 the world in which they live, I shall consider myself as having fully 

 succeeded in the object I have had in view from the beginning in this 

 inquiry. Moreover, it is high time that certain zoologists who would 

 call themselves investigators should remember that natural objects, to 

 be fully understood, require more than a passing glance;^^ they should 

 imitate the example of astronomers, who have not become tired of 

 looking into the relations of the few members of our solar system to 

 determine, with increased precision, their motions, their size, their 

 physical constitution, and keep in mind that every organized being, 

 however simple in its structure, presents to our appreciation far more 

 complicated phenomena within our reach than all the celestial bodies 

 put together; they should remember that as the great literary pro- 

 ductions of past ages attract ever anew the attention of scholars who 

 can never feel that they have exhausted the inquiry into their depth 

 and beauty, so the living works of God, which it is the proper sphere 

 of Zoology to study, would never cease to present new attractions to 

 them, should they proceed to the investigation with the right spirit. 

 Their studies ought indeed inspire everyone with due reverence and 

 admiration for such wonderful productions. 



The subject of classification in particular, which seems to embrace 

 apparently so limited a field in the science of animals, cannot be 

 rightly and fully understood without a comprehensive knowledge of 

 all the topics alluded to in the preceding pages. 



^^ The mere indication of the existence of a species is a poor addition to our knowl- 

 edge, when compared to those monographs in which either the structure or the de- 

 velopment of a single animal is fully illustrated, such as Owen, Memoir on the Pearly 

 Nautilus. It may, indeed, be said that there hardly appears one such work every other 

 year, and that thousands of yeais will be required, at the present rate of our progress, 

 to investigate satisfactorily and in all their relations the hundred thousands of living 

 and extinct animals now known to exist. It might afford some consolation to those 

 impatient spirits who quarrel with their fellow-students about the discovery of a hair 

 upon a stuffed skin, if they only knew what rich harvests remain to be gathered. 



