CLASSIFICATION. 89 



is a superficial chaos of phenomena. The 

 recognition of natural classifications was an 

 excessively slow growth; they were finally 

 worked out by the slow collection of material 

 and successive attempts at a natural arrange- 

 ment. In nature's arrangement of living things 

 over the earth it has been very difficult to recog- 

 nize law, and at first it was possible only where 

 isolation has been long continued and the forces 

 at work upon living things have been few and 

 steady in their action. Even then the recog- 

 nition has required extensive travel and a power- 

 ful inclination to classify and recognize the 

 relations of distant facts to each other. 



It was the recognition of several such arrange- 

 rrients or classifications in Nature that first led 

 Darwin to reflect on the Origin of Species. 

 What immortalized his observations is not the 

 simple fact that they were made, but that by 

 their cumulative presentation they led Darwin 

 to seek an adequate cause for these natural 

 arrangements. 



After pointing out, in the narrative of his 

 voyage, the striking relation between the fossil 

 and the living animals of South America, he 

 said : " This wonderful relationship in the same 

 continent between the dead and the living will, 

 I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on 



