44;0 Mr. W. S. MacLeay on the Di/ing Struggle 



points out those divisions as two out of five. Nothing would 

 have surprised me more than to have discovered organized 

 matter forming a circular group as a whole, or to have ac- 

 complished a quinary distribution of it at the outset. This 

 worthy, therefore, according to his favourite dichotomy, must 

 either not have read the following passage of my work, or, 

 having read, have been too dull to understand it. My words 

 are as follow : " We have two natural, but I fear somewhat 

 arbitrary, divisions of matter, into organic and inorganic. No 

 person denies the existence of this division in nature, still less 

 is the use of it to be despised. The truth however is, that 

 the first great division of matter is not yet ascertained, and 

 the knowledge of it, to say nothing of the celestial bodies, 

 must in a great measure depend on the labours of the che- 

 mist, who has hitherto so little elucidated the nature of heat, 

 light, and many other of those subtle substances which are 

 possibly forms of matter." Who does not see that I was here 

 hinting at the quinary division of matter, as much as if I had 

 expressed it tabularly thus ? 



Matte r. 

 Normal group, f 1. Animals. 

 Organic. \2. Vegetables. 



Aberrant gi'oup. 



Ino)-sa?iic. 



\i 



If the Reverend Doctor be still in doubt that this was my 

 meaning, let him turn to vol, xiv. of the Linnaean Transactions, 

 p. 60. There, speaking of M. Fries, I say, "Consequently in 

 every circle he admits the existence of two central groups, 

 and three radial; that is, in all five natural groups. Thus 

 organized matter is the centrum of matter, and is composed 

 of animals and vegetables. And so on, we shall ever find a 

 natural group to be a circle of five minor groups, and that 

 two of these minor groups form what M. Fries would call a 

 centrum, or, more correctly, have some character in common 

 which distinguishes them from the other three." So much 

 for the first citation from the Horce Entomologicce in favour of 

 Dichotomy. 



Next he says : " Even animals themselves are considered as 

 having been created on two distinct plans" This, a cjuinarian 

 may be allowed to say, is the very quintessence of quoting. I 

 shall give the whole passage as it occurs in the Hone Ento- 

 mologiccE : " Animals appear to have been created on two 

 distinct plans; or, to make use of an idea frequently adopted 

 in this work. Nature seems in the Animal Kingdom to have 

 set out from inorganic matter by two different routes, which 



meet 



