290 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



cular group of plants, and the characters are selected 

 from among a much greater number, merely as marks 

 by which to recognise the group. By no means, I 

 reply; the name does not mean that group, for it 

 would be applied to that group no longer than while 

 the group is believed to be an infima species ; if it were 

 to be discovered that several distinct Kinds have been 

 confounded under this one name, no one would any 

 longer apply the name Viola odorata to the whole of 

 the group, but would apply it, if retained at all, to 

 one only of the Kinds contained therein. What is 

 imperative, therefore, is not that the name shall 

 denote one particular collection of objects, but that it 

 shall denote a Kind, and a lowest Kind. The form 

 of the name declares that, happen what will, it is to 

 denote an infima species; and that, therefore, the 

 properties which it connotes, and which are expressed 

 in the definition, are to be connoted by it no longer 

 than while we continue to believe that those proper- 

 ties, when found together, indicate a Kind, and that 

 the whole of them are found in no more than one 

 Kind. 



With the addition of this peculiar connotation, 

 implied in the form of every word which belongs to a 

 systematic nomenclature; the set of characters which 

 is employed to discriminate each Kind from all other 

 Kinds (and which is a real definition) constitutes as 

 completely as in any other case the whole meaning of 

 the term. It is no objection to say that (as is often 

 the case in natural history), the set of characters may 

 be changed, and another substituted as being better 

 suited for the purpose of distinction, while the word, 

 still continuing to denote the same group of things, 

 is not considered to have changed its meaning. For 

 this is no more than may happen in the case of any 



