Classification. 23 
and Italian were all specially created languages—or 
languages separately constructed by the Deity, and 
by as many separate acts of inspiration communicated 
to the nations which now speak them—and that their 
resemblance to the fossil form, Latin, must be 
attributed to special design? Yet the evidence of the 
natural transmutation of species is in one respect 
much stronger than that of the natural transmutation 
of languages—in respect, namely, of there being a 
vastly greater number of cases all bearing testimony 
to the fact of genetic relationship. 
But, quitting now this most general point of view— 
or the suggestive fact that what we have before us is 
a ¢ree— let us next approach this tree for the purpose 
of examining its structure more in detail. When we 
do this, the fact of next greatest generality which we 
find is as follows. 
In cases where a very old form of life has continued 
to exist unmodified, so that by investigation of its 
anatomy we are brought back to a more primitive 
type of structure than that of the newer forms grow- 
ing higher up wpon the same branch, two things are 
observable. In the first place, the old form is less 
differentiated than the newer ones; and, in the next 
place, it is seen much more closely to resemble types 
of structure belonging to some of the other and larger 
branches of the tree. The organization of the older 
form is not only simpler ; but it is, as naturalists say, 
more generalized. It comprises within itself char- 
acters belonging to its own branch, and also characters 
belonging to neighbouring branches, or to the trunk 
from which allied branches spring. Hence it becomes 
a general rule of classification, that it is by the lowest, 
* D 
