250 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



be any doubt tlut my Scilly animal was a species of Pedicel- 

 Una ; but I had the compensation of ha\Tiig found, instead 

 of a new animal, a new fact with respect to its gener- 

 ation. 



This has been narrated as an illustration of the caution 

 necessary before announcing new genera and species to the 

 world, and needlessly encumbering the already unremember- 

 able lists of names. I was also interested by the puzzlement 

 into which I was thi-own as to the classification of my new 

 animal (when it was thought to be new). 



Indeed, the assignment of animals to their proj^er places 

 in systematic classification will continue to be the work of 

 much unsuccessful ingenuity, until more rigorous and philo- 

 sopliical principles of classification be adopted. That present 

 classifications are only provisional, will scarcely be denied. 

 They liave not the stable basis which can make futm-e 

 researches the simple extension and application of existing 

 principles. A new Method is inevitable ; but we may be 

 years before it is promulgated. An instructive example of 

 our inability to apply the present IMethod, otherwise than in 

 a provisional way, is afforded by that puzzle to zoologists, 

 the Sagitta hipunctata. (Plate V., fig. 1.) Nobody knows 

 where to place it. In aspect it is fish-like ; in some 

 structm\al peculiarities it is fish-like ; in others it is mol- 

 luscan ; in more it is annulose. Siebold classes it with mol- 

 lusca ; Huxley and Krolm, with the annulosa, the former 

 pointing out that " it presents equally strong aflfinities with 

 the fom- principal gi'oups — 1. Tlie Nematoid worms ; 2. The 



