CHAPTER V 

 Origin of Species 



Two hundred thousand species of insects are known, 

 and it is estimated that 450,000 animals in all have been 

 described and named. The Kew catalogue of flowering 

 plants records 120,000 species, and probably the plants 

 which do not flower are equally numerous. The total 

 number of animals and plants already recognised as distinct 

 and separate forms is about three-quarters of a million, and 

 none can say how many yet remain to be described. To 

 classify all these various forms of living things according to 

 some intelligible scheme, is the business of the student of 

 animated nature ; at first, in ignorance of any cause for their 

 diversity of form, botanists and zoologists thought only of 

 so arranging them that they might know where to look for 

 them in their museums, and how to find the name of any 

 particular form which was not familiar, or to make sure that 

 it had not hitherto been described and named. Thus we 

 find Linnaeus arranging plants into ' ' orders, ' ' according 

 to the number of their stamens as we might classify our 

 friends according to the number of letters in their names. 

 Truly such a classification would be useful. We should get 

 all the Smiths into one group and all the Robinsons into 

 another, and when we saw a man with the Macgillicuddy 

 features coming down the road, we should at once think of 

 him as belonging to one of the many-lettered groups, and 

 should know approximately in which album to look for 

 photographs of his near relations. But we should find the 



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