B» STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 



ence or absence of " illustrations" would furnish no 

 better guide, while the bindings would soon be 

 found to follow no rule. Indeed, one by one, all 

 the external characters would prove unsatisfactory, 

 and the laborers would finally have to decide upon 

 some internal characters. Having read enough of 

 each book to ascertain whether it was poetry or 

 prose — and, if poetry, whether dramatic, epic, lyric, 

 or satiric ; and if prose, whether history, philoso- 

 phy, theology, philology, science, fiction, or essay — 

 a rough classification could be made ; but even then 

 there would be many difficulties, such as where to 

 place a work on the philosophy of history — or the 

 history of science — or theology under the guise, of 

 science — or essays on yery different subjects, while 

 some works would defy classification. 



Gigantic as this labor would be, it would be tri- 

 fling compared with the labor of classifying all the 

 animals now living (not to mention extinct species), 

 so that the place of any one might be'securely and 

 rapidly determined ; yet the persistent zeal and sa- 

 gacity of zoologists have done for the animal king- 

 dom what has not yet been done for the library of 

 the Museum, although the titles of the books are 

 not absent. It has been done by patient reading of 

 the contents — ^by anatomical investigation of the in- 

 ternal structure of animals. Except on a basis of 

 comparative anatomy, there could have been no 

 better a classification of animals than a classification 

 of books according to size, language, binding, etc. 



