18 NOMENCLATURE 



cated than an over-appreciation of technicalities, 

 raining the name more highly than the thing; 

 but some knowledge of this scientific nomencla- 

 ture is necessary to every student of Nature. 



While Linnaeus pointed out classes, orders, 

 genera, and species, other naturalists had de- 

 fected other divisions among animals, called fam- 

 ilies. Lamarck, who had been a distinguished 

 botanist before he began his study of the an- 

 imal kingdom, brought to his zoological re- 

 searches his previous methods of investigation. 

 Families in the vegetable kingdom had long 

 been distinguished by French botanists ; and 

 one cannot examine the groups they call by 

 this name, without perceiving, that, though they 

 bring them together and describe them accord- 

 ing to other characters, they have been un- 

 consciously led to unite them from the general 

 similarity of their port and bearing. Take, for 

 instance, the families of Pines, Oaks, Beeches, 

 Maples, etc., and you feel at once, that, besides 

 the common characters given in the technical 

 descriptions of these different groups of trees, 

 there is also a general resemblance among them 

 that would naturally lead us to associate them 

 together, even if we knew nothing of the special 

 features of their structure. By an instinctive 

 recognition of this family likeness between 

 plants, botanists have been led to seek for 



