Classification. 33 



and Italian were all specially created languages or 

 languages separately constructed by the Deity, and 

 by as many separate acts of inspiration communicated 

 to the nations which now speak them and that their 

 resemblance to the fossil form, Latin, must be 

 attributed to special design ? Yet the evidence of the 

 natural transmutation of species is in one respect 

 much stronger than that of the natural transmutation 

 of languages in respect, namely, of there being a 

 vastly greater number of cases all bearing testimony 

 to the fact of genetic relationship. 



But, quitting now this most general point of view 

 or the suggestive fact that what we have before us is 

 a tree- let us next approach this tree for the purpose 

 of examining its structure more in detail. When we 

 do this, the fact of next greatest generality which we 

 find is as follows. 



In cases where a very old form of life has continued 

 to exist unmodified, so that by investigation of its 

 anatomy we are brought back to a more primitive 

 type of structure than that of the newer forms grow- 

 ing higher up upon the same branch^ two things are 

 observable. In the first place, the old form is less, 

 differentiated than the newer ones ; and, in the next 

 place, it is seen much more closely to resemble types 

 of structure belonging to some of the other and larger 

 branches of the tree. The organization of the older 

 form is not only simpler ; but it is ; as naturalists say, 

 more generalized. It comprises within itself char- 

 acters belonging to its own branch, and also characters 

 belonging to neighbouring branches, or to the trunk 

 from which allied branches spring. Hence it becomes 

 a general rule of classification, that it is by the lowest, 



* D 



