2 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



with much the same interest as antiquarians and ethno- 

 graphers collect the weapons and utensils of different nations. 

 Many have not even risen above the degree of intelligence 

 with which people usually collect, label, and arrange crests, 

 stamps, and similar curiosities. In the same manner as 

 some collectors find their pleasure in the similarity of forms, 

 the beauty or rarity of the crests or stamps, and admire 

 in them the inventive art of man, so many naturalists take 

 a delight in the manifold forms of animals and plants, and 

 marvel at the rich imagination of the Creator, at His 

 unwearied creative activity, and at His curious fancy for 

 forming, by the side of so many beautiful and useful organ- 

 isms, also a number of ugly and useless ones. 



This childlike treatment of systematic Zoology and Botany 

 is completely annihilated by the Theory of Descent. In the 

 place of the superficial and playful interest with which most 

 naturalists have hitherto regarded organic structures, we 

 now have the much liigher interest of the intelligent under- 

 standing which detects in the related forms of organisms 

 their true blood o'elationships. The Natural System of 

 animals and plants, which was formerly valued either only 

 as a registry of names, to facilitate the survey of the difierent 

 forms, or as a table of contents for the short expression of 

 their degrees of similarity, receives from the Theory of 

 Descent the incomparably higher value of a true pedigree of 

 organisms. This pedigree is to disclose to us the genealo- 

 gical connection of the smaller and larger groups. It has to 

 show us in what way the difierent classes, orders, families, 

 genera, and species of the animal and vegetable kingdoms 

 correspond with the difierent branches, twigs, and groups of 

 twigs of the pedigree. Every wider and higher category 



