44 CLASSIFICATION IN RELATION TO ORGANISED BEINGS. 



of life, for the leading means of subdivision, nor does it at all appear to 

 me that the grouping thus obtained is conformable with the best ideas 

 of natural arrangement obtained in other ways. On the contrary, the 

 great mammalian sections of Owen, founded on the structure of the 

 brain, divide the whole into groups strikingly natural in their general 

 aspect, and singularly constant in the correspondence of analagous 

 divisions in all the great sections. One other observation I will 

 venture upon at present : among the more remarkable modern 

 systems must be accounted that of McLeay, and one thing re- 

 markable about it is the rapidity with which — at least among Eng- 

 lish Naturalists — it was adopted for the time, with the greater rapid- 

 ity with which it has been consigned to comparative oblivion. I 

 cannot contend that as left by its author or by his great disciple 

 Swainson, it is entitled to revived popularity, but I do think that it 

 gave prominence to some just and important ideas, calculated to aid 

 us in our progress, and I feel that it has met of late, when noticed at 

 all, with some unjust treatment. Its better features are not only the 

 calling attention to the difference between affinity and analogy, but 

 the perception that the regular order of nature implies, prevailing 

 uniformity in the number of the divisions under each type of struc- 

 ture, and the illustration of this principle in a great number of good 

 examples, although many errors were committed from the necessary 

 imperfection of a first attempt, the impossibility of one individual 

 being minutely acquainted with all the branches, and from some false 

 views as to the nature of the relations between the subdivisions of 

 each natural group. 



Let us give up the fanciful notion of each natural circle returning 

 on itself, using the circle or the pentagon merely as a convenient way 

 of representing the corresponding tendencies under each type in their 

 relation to its common characters, and let us express the nature of 

 the subdivisions, not by calling them typical, subtypical and aberrant, 

 expressions which have no useful meaning, and which cause corres- 

 ponding developments of different types to oecupy different positions 

 in their respective circles, but by giving appropriate positions to each 

 tendency of development which shall be uniformly adhered to through- 

 out our whole system, so as to force on our attention the analogies of 

 nature, and we may perhaps attain to a combination of the best 

 thoughts of the German Physiophilosophers with a most convenient 

 exposition of the relations of the parts of creation, already affording 



