2 THE HISTORY OF CREATION, 
with much the same interest as antiquarians and ethno- 
graphers collect the weapons and utensils of different nations. 
Many have not even risen above the degree of intelligence 
with which people usually collect, label, and arrange crests, 
stamps, and similar curiosities. In the same manner as 
some collectors find their pleasure in the similarity of forms, 
the beauty or rarity of the crests or stamps, and admire 
in them the inventive art of man, so many naturalists take 
a delight in the manifold forms of animals and plants, and 
marvel at the rich imagination of the Creator, at His 
unwearied creative activity, and at His curious fancy for 
forming, by the side of so many beautiful and useful organ- 
isms, also a: number of ugly and useless ones. 
This childlike treatment of systematic Zoology and Botany 
is completely annihilated by the Theory of Descent. In the 
place of the superficial and playful interest with which most 
naturalists have hitherto regarded organic structures, we 
now have the much higher interest of the intelligent under- 
standing which detects in the related forms of organisms 
their true blood relationships. The Natural System of 
animals and plants, which was formerly valued either only 
as a registry of names, to facilitate the survey of the different 
forms, or as a table of contents for the short expression of 
their degrees of similarity, receives from the Theory of 
Descent the incomparably higher value of a true pedigree of 
organisms. This pedigree is to disclose to us the genealo- 
gical connection of the smaller and larger groups. It has to 
show us in what way the different classes, orders, families, 
genera, and species of the animal and vegetable kingdoms 
correspond with the different branches, twigs, and groups of 
twigs of the pedigree. Every wider and higher category 
