LESSON 28.] SPECIES AND KINDS. 173 



LESSON XXVIII. 



SPECIES AND KINDS. 



496. Until now, we have been considering plants as to their 

 structure and their mode of life. We have, as it were, been read- 

 ing the biography of an individual plant, following it from the tiny 

 seedling up to the mature and fruit-bearing herb or tree, and learning 

 how it grows and what it does. The botanist also considers plants 

 as to their relationships. 



497. Plants and animals, as is well known, have two great pecu- 

 liarities : 1st, they form themselves ; and 2d, they multiply them- 

 selves. They reproduce themselves in a continued succession of 



498. Individuals (3). Mineral things occur as masses, which are 

 divisible into smaller and still smaller ones without alteration of 

 their properties (391). But organic things (vegetables and ani- 

 mals) exist as individual beings. Each' owes its existence to a 

 parent, and produces similar individuals in its turn. So each indi- 

 vidual is a link of a chain ; and to this chain the natural-historian • 

 applies the name of 



499. Species. All the descendants from the same stock therefore 

 compose one species. And it was from our observing that the sev- 

 eral sorts of plants or animals steadily reproduce themselves, — or, .in 

 other words, keep up a succession of similar individuals, — that the 

 idea of species originated. So we are led to conclude that the Cre- 

 ator established a definite number of species at the beginning, which 

 have continued by propagation, each after its kind. 



500. There are few species, however, in which man has actually 

 observed the succession for many generations. It could seldom be 

 proved that all the White Pine trees or White Oaks of any forest 

 came from the same stock. But observation having familiarized 

 us with the general fact, that individuals proceeding from the same 

 stock are essentially alike, we infer from their close resemblance 

 that these similar individuals belong to the same species. That is, 

 we infer it when the individuals are as much like each other as those 

 are which we know to have sprung from the same stock. 



501. We do not infer it from every resemblance ; for there is the 

 resemblance of kind, — as between the White Oak and the Red Oak, 



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