36 CHAPTERS ON EVOLUTION. 



III. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ANIMAL AND 

 PLANT KINGDOMS. 



THE intelligent foreigner, visiting a country which to him is practi- 

 cally a terra incognita, and desirous of acquainting himself as fully 

 as possible with the constitution of the land wherein he intends to 

 sojourn, would contrive, before departing from his native coasts, to 

 gain some adequate idea of the new country itself, its government and 

 laws, its social, political, and religious condition, its geographical and 

 geological features, and its general history in so far as these details 

 were necessary for the comprehension of what he expected to see 

 and hear during his foreign tour. If to the details of its present 

 condition he was able to add information concerning its past if he 

 could trace its history along the lines of centuries, and discover how 

 this event or that occurrence had tended to mould the country and 

 its constitution into its existing form, his appreciation of the strange 

 land, as presented to his view to-day, would tend to become of still 

 more complete nature. And if, lastly, from his study of the past 

 and present of the foreign territory, he ventured to indulge in any 

 reflections on its possible or probable future, and on its chances of 

 further development or possible decline, such reflections would 

 possess every claim to rank as rational thoughts, deducible from his 

 knowledge of the land as it was and is. 



The parallelism between the process of acquiring an adequate 

 knowledge of a foreign state, and that of gaining some idea of the 

 constitution of the worlds of living beings, can readily be shown 

 to be of the closest possible description. The most superficial 

 acquaintance with the study of zoology and botany, if carried out 

 in any fashion worthy the name of a scientific and intellectual 

 exercise, must proceed along lines which follow out in all essential 

 details the pathways whereby we gain an intelligent idea of a 

 foreign land. No study of animals or of plants can be satisfactorily 

 carried out without, at least, a brief preliminary discussion of the 

 constitution of the worlds of life, and without some acquaintance 

 with their mutual relationships and their fundamental characters. 

 In the light of recent researches concerning the " why and where- 

 fore " of the animal and plant kingdoms, such preliminary knowledge 

 becomes not merely of high importance, but of absolutely essential 



