7594 Notices of New Boohs. 



relationship. Classification, or the subordination of group to group, 

 is a general and vastly-extensive natural law. There is not a single 

 principle in organic classification that Mr. Darwin enlists as favourable 

 to his theory that is not strikingly paralleled in some unrelated part of 

 creation ; for instance, the analogy between the system of arrangement 

 of the heavenly bodies, — satellites grouped round planets, planets 

 round the suns, and, again, suns or stars round some common centre 

 into nebulous groups, — and that subordination of group to group, in 

 organic classification, which he attributes to blood relationship. 



Then, again, the unequal amounts of differences separating species, 

 which Mr. Darwin attributes to the secondary cause of extinction, is 

 most strikingly paralleled in the mineral kingdom, where such a pro- 

 cess could not take place ; here we have group subordinate to group, 

 and the unequal amount of difference between different groups and 

 the individuals of different groups, just as in the organic kingdoms; 

 indeed, if Mr. Darwin could believe he was dealing with plants or 

 animals instead of inactive mineral elements, he could weave them 

 into a genealogical series more remarkably consistent than the blood 

 affinities he asumes exist in the organic kingdoms, not merely by 

 arbitrary measures of resemblance, but, as every chemist knows, by 

 the most complex and exquisitely perfect series of correlated affinities. 

 With reference to inorganic classification, and the unequal amounts 

 of difference distinguishing the sixty or seventy elements, the grouping 

 together of the alkalies is most striking. If they were plants or animals 

 Mr. Darwin would surely say that they were very recently descended 

 from some common parent, and that they ought not to be ranked 

 higher than varieties ; and if the extremes of dissimilarity in the 

 elements were linked together by the same slight amounts of difference, 

 it would require several thousand individuals to perfect the series. 

 Again : arsenic and antimony are associated by an extraordinary 

 number of common properties, and, as compared with these close 

 affinities, there are, as in the organic kingdoms, isolated individuals — 

 as carbon, nitrogen and silex — which might be aptly compared to the 

 Ornithorhynchus and Apteryx of the oigauic series. Then, again, 

 there are little groups of elements, as that including iodine, bromine, 

 chlorine and fluorine, with their individuals closely related, but col- 

 lectively isolated in character from the other elements and other 

 groups, as the alkalies, alkaline earths and true earths, which are 

 more easily associated into a related series. There are also kinds of 

 resemblances which may be compared to collateral relationship, as 

 between the heavy and the light metals in the affinities of baryura to 



