THE ARCHirELAGO OF BREHAT. 95 



peared to be logical. But nature, who is alwa3's 

 simple in the laws by which she is regulated, is very 

 rarely simple in the manifestation of those laws. In 

 the production of living beings as well as in the 

 creation of organic bodies, nature in her ascending 

 progress has followed no mathematical straight line ; 

 her creations are developed in all directions. Science 

 in its unceasing progress has elucidated this truth^ 

 and in the present day the words zoological series and 

 animal scale are employed by the great majority 

 of naturalists merely in a figurative and relative 

 sense. 



But if the unity of the animal series is a chimera, 

 what general idea can we substitute for this con- 

 ception of our predecessors ? On the first exami- 

 nation of a species we perceive that it possesses two 

 kinds of characters. The first kind isolates it from 

 contiguous species, and individualises it in space 

 and time; the second connects together a certain 

 number of these individualities, and associates them 

 in more or less strictly defined groups. What we 

 have just said of species may be equally well ob- 

 served in respect to elementary groups ; and it is by 

 the appreciation of more or less general characters, 

 that the naturalist, passing on through ascending 

 groups, reaches the kingdom^ which embraces all the 

 secondary divisions known as sub-kingdoms, di- 

 visions and sub-divisions, classes, orders, families, 

 tribes, and genera. To ascertain the subordination 



Manuel de Malacologie, Manuel d'Actinologie, Histoire des Sciences 

 de r Organisation, and a host of memoirs. It is to be regretted 

 that his magnificent Osteographie remained unfinished at his death. 



