The System of Nature. 1163 



To place organized beings in such order, that any one of them, 

 selected at random, shall have a greater relationship with its neigh- 

 bours than with any other species, or in other words, to assign to 

 each species that place which it really occupies in Nature, and in 

 which its propinquity to or distance from every other species shall 

 exactly correspond with the amount of difference between it and 

 each of them, — this is the great desideratum, the ideal perfection to 

 which the energies of the greatest naturalists and of the greatest 

 minds from Aristotle downwards have been directed. Now although 

 a perfect scheme of Nature has not been realized, and probably never 

 will be realized until science itself shall be complete — and perhaps 

 our earth may never be permitted to witness the day — still consider- 

 ations of this kind need not deter us from making the attempt. No 

 effort of the mind is lost : the foundations of chemistry were laid by 

 alchemists in their search for the philosophers' stone ; and in the pur- 

 suit of the ideal perfection in methodical combinations, naturalists 

 have brought to light a multitude of relations, all leading us nearer to 

 the desired end. And supposing they never attained this, yet they 

 arrived by degrees at a classification whose relative value must crown 

 their efforts with results eminently useful. And we think that more 

 than one result of this kind will flow from the new classification pro- 

 posed by Mr. Newman. The methods previously proposed were 

 linear, that is to say, they placed beings on a line, either direct or 

 curved, and returning into itself: simple or double. Now our author 

 well observes : — 



" Infinitely varied though they be, the naturalist seldom finds in created beings 

 those sudden transitions from one structure to another which this the most approved 

 linear system is constantly exhibiting ; the reason is obvious : in carefully following 

 out similarities, in seeking with a free and unfettered mind to trace in each animal 

 all its points of resemblance to others, he will constantly find some conspicuous form 

 which shall possess several marked characters ; one of such characters shall be pos- 

 sessed by several other animals, a different character by each different animal : again, 

 he will often find that an obviously natural group contains widely different forms, 

 some of such forms bearing a greater superficial resemblance to certain other groups 

 than to the usual form of that group to which, from a comparison of their anatomical 

 structure, they obviously belong : these forms, which have beeu called abnormal, differ 

 also exceedingly from each other, yet still generally exhibit, in a nearly equal degree, 

 though widely different mode, similarities to the usual or what is properly termed nor- 

 mal form of the group. Now no system hitherto invented will at all cope with this : 

 in a linear-series any group that shall contain representatives of even three other groups 

 cannot possibly be so arranged as that each representative shall approach the form re- 

 presented ; hence no system possesses capacity sufficient to account for those diversified 

 similarities which all reflecting naturalists must have observed, and I cannot but con- 



