IX THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF ZOOLOGY 341 



view of the significance of all attempts at framing a 

 *' natural " classification. 



Many zoologists — prominent among them in Great 

 Britain being Huxley — had been repelled by the airy 

 fancies and assumptions of the ''philosophical" mor- 

 phologists. The efforts of the best minds in Zoology 

 had been directed for thirty years or more to ascer- 

 taining with increased accuracy and minuteness the 

 structure, microscopic and gross, of all accessible forms 

 of animals, and not only of the adult structure but of 

 the steps of development of that structure in the 

 growth of each kind of organism from the egg to 

 maturity. Putting aside fantastic theories, these ob- 

 servers endeavoured to give in their classifications a 

 strictly objective representation of the facts of animal 

 structure and of the structural relationships of animals 

 to one another capable of demonstration. The groups 

 within groups adopted for this purpose were neces- 

 sarily wanting in symmetry : the whole system pre- 

 sented a strangely irregular character. From time to 

 time efforts were made by those who believed that the 

 Creator must have followed a symmetrical system in 

 his production of animals to force one or other arti- 

 ficial, neatly balanced scheme of classification upon the 

 zoological world. The last of these was that of Louis 

 Agassiz (Essay on Classification, 1859), who, whilst 

 surveying all previous classifications, propounded a 

 scheme of his own, in which, as well as in the criticisms 

 he applies to other systems, the leading notion is that 

 sub-kingdoms, classes, orders, and families have a real 

 existence. He held that it is possible to ascertain and 



