434 CONCLUSION. Cbap. XIV 



gy,* adaptive cliaraclcrs, rudimeiitaiy and abortive organs, etc., 

 Avill cease to be nietaphorica], and will have a plain significa- 

 tion. AVhen we no longer look at an organic being as a sav- 

 age looks at a ship, as something wholly beyond his compre- 

 hension ; when we regard every production of Nature as one 

 which has had a long history ; when we contemplate every com- 

 plex structure and instinct as the summing up of many con- 

 trivances, 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 

 workmen ; 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 tlie 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 sjiecies added to the infinitude of already-re- 

 corded species. Our classifications will come to be, as far as 

 they can be so made, genealogies ; and Avill then truly give 

 what may be called the plan of creation. The rules for classi- 

 fying will no doubt become simpler when we have a definite 

 object in view. We possess no pedigrees or armorial bear- 

 ings ; and we have to discov' cr and trace the many diverging 

 lines of descent in our natural genealogies, by characters of 

 any kind wliich have long been inherited. Rudimentary or- 

 gans will speak infallibly with respect to the nature of long- 

 lost structures. Species and groups of species, which are 

 called aberrant, and wliich may fancifully be called living fos- 

 sils, 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. 



A\'lien 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 

 parent, and have migrated from some one birthplace; and 

 Avhen we better know the many means of migration, then, by 

 the light which geology now throws, and will continue to 

 throw, on former changes of climate and of the level of the 

 land, we shall surely be enabled to trace in an admirable man- 

 ner the former migrations of the inhabitants of the whole 



