PBINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF CLASSIFICATION. 76 



them. The same fancy vitiated all ideas upon the subject of genera, families, and higher 

 groups. A " genus " was to be discovered in nature, just like a species ; to be named and 

 deiined. Then species that answered the definition were "typical"; those that did not do so 

 well were " sub -typical " ; those that did worse, were "aberrant." A good deal was said of 

 " types of structure," much as if living creatures were originally run into moulds, like casting 

 type-metal, to i-eceive some indehble stamp; while — to carry out my simile — it was supposed 

 that by looking at some particular aspect of such an animal, as at the face of a printer's type, 

 it could be determined in what box in the case the creature should be put ; the boxes them- 

 selves being supposed to be arranged by Nature in some particular way to make them fit 

 perfectly alongside each other by threes or fives, or in stars and circles, or what not. How 

 much ingenuity was wasted in striving to put together such a Chinese puzzle as these fancies 

 made of Nature's processes and results, I need not say ; suffice it, that such views have become 

 extinct, by the method of natural selection, and others, apparently better fitted to survive, are 

 now in the struggle for existence. Rightly appreciated, however, the expression which heads 

 this paragraph is a proper one. There are numberless "types of structure." It is perfectly 

 proper to speak of the " vertebrate type,'' meaning thereby the whole plan of organization of 

 any vertebrate, if we clearly understand that such a type is not an independent or original 

 model conformably with which all back-boned animals were separately created, but that it is 

 one modification of some more general plan of organization, the unfolding of which may or 

 did result in other besides vertebrated animals ; and that the successive modifications of the 

 vertebrate plan resulted in other forms, equally to be regarded as "types," as the reptilian, 

 the avian, the mammalian. Upon this understanding, a group of any grade in the animal 

 kingdom is a " type of structure," of more general or more special significance, presumably 

 according to the longer or shorter time it has been in existence. An individual specimen is 

 " typical " of a species, a species is " typical " of a genus, etc., if it has not had time enough to 

 be modified away from the characters which such species or genus expresses. Any set of 

 individuals, that is, any progeny, which become modi&ed to a degree from their progenitors, 

 introduce a new type; and continually increasing modification makes such a type specific, 

 generic, and so on, in succession of time. There must have been a time, for example, when 

 the Avian and Reptilian " types" began to diverge from each other, or, rather, to branch apart 

 from their common ancestry. In the initial step of their divergence, when then- respective 

 types were beginning to be formed, the difference must have been infinitesimal. A little 

 further along, the increment of difference became, let us say, equivalent to that which serves to 

 distinguish two species. Wider and wid6r divergence increased the difference till genera, 

 families, orders, and finally the classes of Beptilia and Aves, became established. In one 

 sense, therefore, — and it is the usual sense of the tenn, — the " type " of a bird is that one 

 which is fwrthest removed from the reptilian type, — which is most highly specialized by differ- 

 entiation to the last degree from the characters of its primitive ancestors. One of the Osci/nes, 

 as a thrush or spaiTow, would answer to such a type, having lost the low, primitive, gener- 

 alized structure of its early progenitors, and acquired very special characters of its own, repre- 

 senting the extreme modification which the stock whence it sprung has undergone. In a 

 broader sense, however, the type of a bird is simply the stock from which it originated ; and 

 in such sense the highest birds are the least typical, being the furthest removed and the most 

 modified derivations of such stock, the characters of which are consequently remodelled and 

 obscured to the last degree. Two opposite ideas have evidently been confused in the use of 

 the word "Type." They may be distinguished by inventing the word teleotype (Gr. reXeor, 

 teleos, final, i. e., accomplished or determined ; formed like teleology, etc.) in the usual sense of 

 the word type, and using the word we already possess, prototype (Gr. itpwroi, protos, first, 

 leading, determining), in the broader sense of the earlier plan whence any teleotype has been 

 derived by modification. This, Ichthyornis or Archmopteryx is prototypic of modern birds. 



