THE MODERN STUDY OF ZOOLOGY 5 



he was a zoologist. The passage quoted bears 

 evidence in itself that the four groups named were 

 intended to include the whole of the animal king- 

 dom ; but any doubt on this point is removed by 

 the fact that in other parts of the Old Testament 

 the animal kingdom is distinctly divided into these 

 same four groups.* We are therefore justified in 

 speaking of this as a zoological classification. 



If we examine this classification more closely we 

 see that the habits of the different animals, and 

 more especially the media in which they live, are 

 made the basis on which the several divisions are 

 founded. Thus beasts include terrestrial animals, 

 animals living on dry land ; fowl are those animals 

 that possess the power of flight and so are enabled 

 to live as denizens of the air ; fishes are animals 

 adapted for living in water ; while creeping things 

 probably included what we now call insects, and 

 any other small forms that could not be referred 

 readily to either of the other groups. Such a 

 system may be spoken of as a classification by dis- 

 tribution. It is one of easy application, and so far 

 a convenient one, but inasmuch as it takes no 

 account whatever of structural and physiological 

 resemblances and differences between the several 

 animals with which it deals it must be regarded as 

 an exceedingly primitive one. 



The next classification of any great importance 

 that we meet with is that given by Aristotle, per- 

 haps the greatest and most truly scientific man in 

 the highest sense of the word that the world has 

 * e.g. Deuteronomy iv. 17, 18. 



