1910.] Storr's System. 47 



larity. In any scheme of this khid the more indusivc cijroiips must always 

 be less "natural" than the less inclusive groups, since the number of char- 

 acters that can possibly be predicted of a given group sinks from infinity 

 in the case of the individual to the few fundamental properties of all reality 

 in the case of the "imperium naturae." Even in our own time considerably 

 less than "infinity" is known about each individual and each species, and, 

 higher up in the scale, the number of characters which are assigned to all 

 the Mammalia, for example, will not be above fifty even in that most thor- 

 ough work, Weber's ' Die Siiugetiere'. Hence it is not surprising that Storr's 

 supergeneric divisions, based as they were in each case upon single characters, 

 should be on the whole very unnatural. 



The reliance upon single characters, which is well illustrated in the 

 system under consideration, and which was avoided by the genuis of Linne, 

 was fatal to the naturalness of all earlier and of many later classifications; 

 but was a necessary step in the evolution of clearer comprehension and 

 better methods. The consistent application of a single character or set 

 of characters doubtless gave to a classification an appearance of logic and 

 exactitude that must have appealed strongly to scholars trained in classical 

 and scholastic methods and in the construction of dichotomous tables. 



In the case of Storr's classification the single set of characters selected 

 as major criteria were those of the extremities, which were given higher 

 diagnostic value even than in Ray's system. And it must be confessed that 

 the results so far justified this choice that Storr's classification of the unguicu- 

 late orders is on the whole an improvement upon its predecessors and espe- 

 cially far better than that of Brisson (c/. p. 43), in which foot-structure was 

 subordinated to the number of incisor teeth. 



In directing attention anew to the clear and convenient results of classifi- 

 cation by foot-structure, and especially in the invention of the terms "Man- 

 uati," "Emanuati," "Palmares," " Palmoplantares," and "Plantares," 

 Storr very probably inspired the terms "Bimanes," " Quaclrumanes," 

 "Pedimanes," "Plantigrades," etc., used by Cuvier and his immediate 

 predecessors, while the work of that school is also strongly suggested both 

 in the arrangement of the plantigrade insectivores and carnivores, and in 

 the general sequence of the genera of mammals. 



It is not always easy to demonstrate the exact relations of a particular 

 author to succeeding, contemporary and antecedent thought. As in the case 

 of every other body of doctrines each stage in the history of the classification 

 of mammals is marked by certain principles which seem to be "in the air," 

 as it were, and which in the fertile soil of certain individual minds spring up 

 constantly into combinations of the old and the new. And so it is with 

 Storr. From preceding and contemporary writers he drew the subject 



