THE CHARACTERS OF GENERA. 129 



the Corals. Many others have followed this ex- 

 ample, but few have kept in view the necessity of 

 a uniform mode of proceeding, or, if they have 

 done so, their researches have covered too limit- 

 ed a ground to be taken into consideration in a 

 discussion of principles. 



It is, in fact, only when extending over a 

 whole Class that the study of Genera acquires a 

 truly scientific importance, as it then shows, in a 

 connected manner, in what way, by what features, 

 and to what extent a large number of animals 

 are closely linked together in Nature. Con- 

 sidering the Animal Kingdom as a single com- 

 plete work of one Creative Intellect, consistent 

 throughout, such keen analysis and close criti- 

 cism of all its parts have the same kind of inter- 

 est, in a higher degree, as that which attaches to 

 other studies undertaken in the spirit of careful 

 comparative research. These different categories 

 of characters are, as it were, different peculiari- 

 ties of style in the author, different modes of 

 treating the same material, new combinations of 

 evidence bearing on the same general principles. 

 The study of Genera is a department of Natural 

 History which thus far has received too little at- 

 tention even at the hands of our best zoologists, 

 and has been treated in the most arbitrary man- 

 ner ; it should henceforth be made a philosophical 

 investigation into the closer affinities which nat> 



6* I 



