274 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



knot, and which yet are clearly more connected with it than 

 with any other. And even if there should be some species 

 of which the place is dubious, and which appear to be 

 equally bound to two generic types, it is easily seen that this 

 would not destroy the reality of the generic groups, any more 

 than the scattered trees of the intervening plain prevent 

 our speaking intelligibly of the distinct forests of two separate 

 hills. 



" The type-species of every genus, the type- genus of every 

 family, is, then, one which possesses all the characters and 

 properties of the genus in a marked and prominent manner. 

 The type of the Eose family has alternate stipulate leaves, 

 wants the albumen, has the ovules not erect, has the stigmata 

 simple, and besides these features, which distinguish it from 

 the exceptions or varieties of its class, it has the features 

 which make it prominent in its class. It is one of those 

 which possess clearly several leading attributes ; and thus, 

 though we cannot say of any one genus that it must be the 

 type of the family, or of any one species that it must be the 

 type of the genus, we are still not wholly to seek ; the type 

 must be connected by many affinities with most of the others 

 of its group ; it must be near the centre of the crowd, and not 

 one of the stragglers." 



In this passage (the latter part of which especially I 

 cannot help noticing as an admirable example of philosophic 

 style) Dr. Whewell has stated very clearly and forcibly, but 

 (I think) without making all necessary distinctions, one of 

 the principles of a Natural Classification. What this prin- 

 ciple is, what are its limits, and in what manner he seems to 

 me to have overstepped them, will appear when we have laid 

 down another rule of Natural Arrangement, which appears to 

 me still more fundamental. 



4. The reader is by this time familiar with the general 

 truth (which I restate so often on account of the great confu- 

 sion in which it is commonly involved), that there are in 

 nature distinctions of Kind ; distinctions not consisting in a 





