CLASSIFICATION BY SERIES. 327 



Where the principal phenomenon so far transcends 

 in importance all other properties on which a classifi- 

 cation could be grounded, as it does in the case of 

 animated existence, any considerable deviation from 

 the rule last laid down is in general sufficiently 

 guarded against by the first principle of a natural 

 arrangement, that of forming the groups according to 

 the most important characters. All attempts at a 

 scientific classification of animals, since first their ana- 

 tomy and physiology were successfully studied, have 

 been framed with a certain degree of instinctive refe- 

 rence to a natural series, and have accorded, in many 

 more points than they have differed, with the classifi- 

 cation which would most naturally have been grounded 

 upon such a series. But the accordance has not 

 always been complete, and it still is often a matter of 

 discussion which of several classifications best accords 

 with the true scale of intensity of the main pheno- 

 menon. M. Comte, for example, blames Cuvier for 

 having formed his natural groups with an undue 

 degree of reference to the mode of alimentation, a 

 circumstance directly connected only with organic 

 life, and leading to an arrangement most inappropriate 

 for the purposes of an investigation of the laws of 

 animal life, since both carnivorous and herbivorous or 

 frugivorous animals are found at almost every degree 

 in the scale of animal perfection. M. Comte, with 

 much apparent reason, gives, on these grounds, greatly 

 the preference to the classification framed by M. de 

 Blainville ; as representing correctly, by the mere order 

 of the groups, the successive degeneracy of animal 

 nature from its highest to its most imperfect exempli- 

 fication. 



5. A classification of any large portion of the field 



