CLASSIFICATION. 269 



tion to a Technical or Artificial, classification or arrangement. 

 The phrase Natural Classification seems most peculiarly appro- 

 priate to such arrangements as correspond, in the groups 

 which they form, to the spontaneous tendencies of the mind, 

 by placing together the objects most similar in their general 

 aspect : in opposition to those technical systems which, 

 arranging things according to their agreement in some cir- 

 cumstance arbitrarily selected, often throw into the same 

 group objects which in the general aggregate of their pro- 

 perties present no resemblance, and into different and remote 

 groups, others which have the closest similarity. It is one of 

 the most valid recommendations of any classification to the 

 character of a scientific one, that it shall be a natural classifi- 

 cation in this sense also ; for the test of its scientific character 

 is the number and importance of the properties which can be 

 asserted in common of all objects included in a group ; and 

 properties on which the general aspect of the things depends, 

 are, if only on that ground, important, as well as, in most 

 cases, numerous. But, though a strong recommendation, this 

 circumstance is not a sine qua non ; since the most obvious 

 properties of things may be of trifling importance compared 

 with others that are not obvious. I have seen it mentioned as 

 a great absurdity in the Linnsean classification, that it places 

 (which by the way it does not) the violet by the side of the 

 oak: it certainly dissevers natural affinities, and brings 

 together things quite as unlike as the oak and the violet are. 

 But the difference, apparently so wide, which renders the 

 juxtaposition of those two vegetables so suitable an illustration 

 of a bad arrangement, depends, to the common eye, mainly on 

 mere size and texture ; now if we made it our study to adopt 

 the classification which would involve the least peril of similar 

 rapprochements, we should return to the obsolete division into 

 trees, shrubs, and herbs, which though of primary importance 

 with regard to mere general aspect, yet (compared even with 

 so petty and unobvious a distinction as that into dicotyledons 

 and monocotyledons) answers to so few differences in the other 

 properties of plants, that a classification founded on it (inde- 

 pendently of the indistinctness of the lines of demarca- 



