502 CONCLUSION. 



The other and more general departments of natural his- 

 tory will rise greatl}' in interest. The terms used by nat- 

 uralists, of affinity, relationship, community of type, 

 paternity, morphology, adaptive characters, rudimentary 

 and aborted organs, etc., will cease to be metaphorical, and 

 will have a plain signification. When we no longer look 

 at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as some- 

 thing wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard 

 every production of nature as one which has had a long 

 history; when we contemplate every complex structure and 

 instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each 

 useful to the possessor, in the same way as any great 

 mechanical invention is the summing up of the labor, the 

 experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous 

 w^orkmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far 

 more interesting — I speak from experience — does the study 

 of natural history become! 



A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be 

 opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation, 

 on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct action of 

 external conditions, and so forth. The study of domestic 

 productions will rise immensely in value. A new variety 

 raised by man will be a more important and interesting 

 subject for study than one more species added to the infin- 

 itude of already recorded species. Our classifications will 

 come to be, as far as they can be so made, genealogies; 

 and will then truly give what may be called the plan of 

 creation. The rules for classifying will no doubt become 

 simpler when we have a definite object in view. We pos- 

 sess no pedigree or armorial bearings; and we have to dis- 

 cover and trace the many diverging lines of descent in our 

 natural genealogies, by characters of any kind which have 

 long been inherited. Eudimentary organs will speak 

 infallibly with respect to the nature of long-lost structures. 

 Species and groups of species which are called aberrant, 

 and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid 

 us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. 

 Embryology will often reveal to us the structure, in some 

 degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great class. 



When we can feel assured that all the individuals of the 

 same species, and all the closely allied species of most genera, 

 have, within a not very remote period descended from one 



