( xxviii ) 



This is wrong, as tlic spring-form is no more the species than is tlie 

 summer-form. 



What we have said licre in regard to seasonal varieties, applies also to 

 geograjiiiical and individnal varieties. Wliich of the components of a species 

 is the first-described and -named form depends in nearly every case entirely 

 upon accident. The Hrs(-named form may be the most aberrant and the very 

 youngest devehipnient of tlie species, having originated from one of the later- 

 described compounds of the species. To call this accidentally first-named 

 portion of a sjjecies the species and the later-named forms varieties of tlie first, 

 is a ludicrous confusion of facts. And yet, systematic work, from mammals 

 downwards, teems with this glaring misconception. 



As nomenclature is a convenient auxiliary to classification, as it is sub- 

 servient to science, and must therefore be accommodated to the latter, it should 

 not form a liard-and-fast structure, into the compartments of which the results 

 of ciassificatory research have to be squeezed somehow. The distinction between 

 the scientific part and the accessory nomeuclatorial side of classification should 

 never be lost sight of. 



Tiie aim of scientific research is to discover and elucidate the phenomena 

 of nature. Classification, as part of science, aims at an understanding of the 

 connection between the individuals. To attain this object it relies on facts 

 discovered by two lines of research : firstly, on the facts relating to the body ; 

 and, secondly, on the facts relating to life. And here, as in all scientific 

 research, we find tlie primary question underlying all investigations to be 

 difference or no difference, because science is always comparative, consciously or 

 unconsciously. Morjihology and anatomy provide the classifier with the knowledge 

 of the body. In a vast number of instances there is no other knowledge available 

 than this, to build a classification upon. The corporeal facts of tlie morphologist 

 and anatomist are, however, no absolutely trustworthy basis for a superstructure. 

 For the primary units of the classifier, the individuals, are always different from 

 one another to a certain extent, and therefore cannot be proved to be classi- 

 ficatorially identical by corporeal comparison alone. As in inanimate nature 

 identity can be established by action and reaction, so also in animated nature. 

 The observed differences and apparent identities in tlie bodies of the individuals 

 have to pass the higher criticism of the knowledge of the phenomena of life. 

 Two individuals may appear very different to the morphologist ; but the classifier, 

 who knows from observation of the living animals that one is the offspring of 

 the other, cannot establish any other connection between them than that of parent 

 and offspring, however conspicuous the bodily differences may be. The difi'erences 

 between young and adult, male and female, parent and oflspring, brothers and 

 sisters, however prominent they are, lose all the ciassificatory importance which 

 the morphologist and anatomist (and the classifier misled by him) thought they 

 had, when biology establishes the true relationship of such individuals. On the 

 other hand, apparently insignificant corporeal differences, which the morphologist 

 may scarcely deem worth noticing, often turn out to be differences between 



