CHARACTERS DERIVED FROM STRUCTURE. 27 



tical knowledge of osteology is essential, for one very suffi- 

 cient reason, if for no other, that nothing is left of the differ- 

 ent animals to investigate but their bones. 



For defining groups of living animals, structure is also 

 most important. In species, however, it is often deficient 

 in that clearness and prominence which essential characters 

 demand ; and it has one main disadvantage, that it does not 

 enable us to ascertain an animal when alive : it teaches us 

 only what he is in death. A deer knows a dog without 

 being obliged to hold converse with his canines ; and Nature 

 has not made external distinctions so obvious and sure to 

 the lower animals, and shut us out from this door of know- 

 ledge, or rather opened it, only to be neglected by us. It 

 is not external characters and habits that are so defective in 

 providing us with specific distinctions, but their abuse that 

 has brought their employment into such marked disrepute 

 as contrasted with structure. The illustrious Linnaeus did 

 not thus neglect them in connection with every other cir- 

 cumstance from which his clear and acute understanding 

 could elicit light ; and, however much it may be the fashion 

 to overlook the invaluable services of this Chief of naturalists 

 in his favourite walk of science, it would be perhaps better 

 to pause before we lightly value a means of specific dis- 

 tinction, so especially employed by so great a master. He 

 is not responsible for all the errors of his followers ; and 

 with every assistance which, since his time, anatomy has 

 been able to furnish, we must still, I suspect, be content to 

 define many species by tout-ensemble comparisons with each 

 other, in which, of course, the bones and other parts of 

 structure will often form parts. Nothing, after all, can per- 

 mit us to dispense with an accurate acquaintance with living 

 nature ; and the skill of the anatomist must often yield to that 

 of the peasant who has the opportunity of knowing animals 

 in their native state. A very remarkable example of this 



