CLASSIFICATION BY SERIES. 511 



the arrangement most appropriate for the purposes of an investigation of 

 the laws of animal life, since both carnivorous and herbivorous or frugivo- 

 rous animals are found at almost every degree in the scale of animal per- 

 fection. Blainville's classification has been considered by high authorities 

 to be free from this defect ; as representing correctly, by the mere order 

 of the principal groups, the successive degeneracy of animal nature from 

 its highest to its most imperfect exemplification. 



§ 5. A classification of any large portion of the field of nature in con- 

 formity to the foregoing principles, has hitherto been found practicable 

 only in onp great instance, that of animals. In the case even of vegetables, 

 the natural arrangement has not been carried beyond the formation of nat- 

 ural groups. Naturalists have found, and probably will continue to find it 

 impossible to form those groups into any series, the terms of which corre- 

 spond to real gradations in the phenomenon of vegetative or organic life. 

 Such a difference of degree may be traced between the class of Vascular 

 Plants and that of Cellular, which includes lichens, algae, and other sub- 

 stances whose organization is simpler and more rudimentary than that of 

 the higher order of vegetables, and which therefore approach nearer to 

 mere inorganic nature. But when Ave rise much above this point, we do 

 not find any sufficient difference in the degree in which different plants 

 possess the properties of organization and life. The dicotyledons are of 

 more complex structure, and somewhat more perfect organization, than the 

 monocotyledons ; and some dicotyledonous families, such as the Compositae, 

 are rather more complex in their organization than the rest. But the dif- 

 ferences are not of a marked character, and do not promise to throw any 

 particular light upon the conditions and laws of vegetable life and develop- 

 ment. If they did, the classification of vegetables would have to be made, 

 like that of animals, with reference to the scale or series indicated. 



Although the scientific arrangements of organic nature afford as yet the 

 only complete example of the true principles of rational classification, 

 whether as to the formation of groups or of series, those principles are ap- 

 plicable to all cases in which mankind are called ujjon to bring the various 

 parts of any extensive subject into mental co-ordination. They are as 

 much to the point when objects are to be classed for purposes of art or 

 business, as for those of science. The proper arrangement, for example, of 

 a code of laws, depends on the same scientific conditions as the classifica- 

 tions in natui'al history ; nor could there be a better preparatory discipline 

 for that important function, than the study of the principles of a natural 

 arrangement, not only in the abstract, but in their actual application to the 

 class of phenomena for which they were first elaborated, and which are still 

 the best school for learning their use. Of this the great authority on codi- 

 fication, Bentham, was perfectly aware ; and his early Fragment on Gov- 

 ernment, the admirable introduction to a series of writings unequaled in 

 their department, contains clear and just views (as far as they go) on the 

 meaning of a natural arrangement, such as could scarcely have occurred to 

 any one who lived anterior to the age of Linnaeus and Bernard de Jussieu. 



