of the Dichotomous Sijslem. 4.4.3 



passages out of my works to much greater purpose. For in- 

 stance, in Hor. EnU p. 134, he will find " En, naturae arboris 

 dichotomi corpora omnia proferentis terrestria organicaex ra- 

 musculis extremis aspicias unum !" In page 200 he will find 

 that " the great object of my essay is to trace the ramifications 

 of this dichotomous tree* to its extreme fibres," &c. &c. The 

 Doctor indeed, as usual, appropriates to himself this last idea, 

 and clothing it in his own milk-and-water language passes 

 it off on the poor editor of the Quarterly as his own. But 

 the strongest argument in his own favour that he could pos- 

 sibly have taken from my works, he has most unaccountably 

 altogether omitted; to wit, that to this day I always dicho- 

 tomize a group of five into two Normal and three Aberrant 

 groups, which two divisions are distinguished from each other 

 by a positive and negative character. " Ah ! " says the Do- 

 minie, " after all, at last I have caught you ; you remain bi- 

 nary to the backbone." So far indeed I do, and that for a 

 very simple reason, which will show him how he and all other 

 admirers of positives and negatives fall so invariably on the 

 number two. 



Linnaeus said, " Scias characterem non constituere genus, 

 sed genus characterem." This rule indeed is in direct oppo- 

 sition to the Dichotomous System, which first fixes on some 

 positive character, and so forms the second group by antithe- 

 sis. Nevertheless I adopt the above Linnasan maxim, and 

 having followed my circle of affinities, and found two out of 

 five groups to be what Fries called a centrum, I then seek for 

 some character that will insulate this centrum. Having dis- 

 covered this, I find then, without the aid of the least magic, 

 that the other three of the five groups must remain in the op^ 

 posite category. And this is precisely what I have over and 

 over again said : " No person denies the existence of the bi- 

 nary division, still less is the use of it to be despised." Dr. 

 Fleming may therefore make what use of the above quotations 

 from me he pleases. If he thinks I now deny the binary di- 

 visions there stated, he is mistaken. They are sound, they 

 are solid, with the one exception I have stated; but really I 

 did not think that they deserved to be set forth with such mag- 

 nificent solemnity, or that the wonderful, thrice-wonderful 

 conviction of the author of the Hor^e Entomologicce, as to " the 

 existence of ojily two plans in the animal kingdom," required 



■* The expression "dichotomous tree" aliiules-here to tliat binary ili vision 

 of orKanizcd matter into animals and vei,'ctables wliicii is explained 'llor. Ent. 

 p. 1!J.'). It never was meant that the tree ought to be considered as natu- 

 rally dicliotomous ad itifmilum, in order to understand its affinities and 

 analogies. 



3 L 2 the 



