1948 Classification. 



make the meaning intended to be conveyed more clearly understood. 

 The class of birds are united among themselves by a similarity both 

 of internal organization and external form, far greater than exists 

 among the members of any other of the classes with which they are 

 grouped under the vertebrate division, yet no one would deem them 

 constituting a single order: to call them a sub-class would imply 

 their ranking under some other class, and this the very great distinc- 

 tion they present from any other for ever must forbid. A bird is 

 always known to be a bird, notwithstanding the almost endless variety 

 the class presents ; but among Mammalia, the vulgar look upon the 

 bat as the link of bird and beast, mistake Cetacea for fishes, and 

 the Manis was at one time called a " scaly lizard ; " while in regard 

 to the two remaining classes, it is even now a matter of dispute among 

 men profoundly learned, whether the Lepidosiren is a reptile or a fish. 

 To pursue the illustration from the class of birds, the orders into 

 which it is divided do not show anything approaching to the amount 

 of difference from each other that is seen in other classes, and many 

 of the families, as usually adopted, differ scarcely more among them- 

 selves than do genera, as elsewhere formed. In any class, some of 

 the orders are much more difficult to distinguish and to isolate than 

 others ; the same may be said of the families in any order ; in Mam- 

 malia, for example, no one wishes to remove any of those species of 

 which the order Rodentia is formed, or to add to it any of the species 

 hitherto placed in other orders ; therefore the distinctions which sepa- 

 rate this order from the rest, and the ties which unite its members 

 among themselves, must certainly be stronger than those of any other 

 in the class ; but, on the contrary, naturalists are by no means agreed 

 as to whether man should form a distinct order of himself, or con- 

 descend to be associated with those creatures which sometimes seem 

 as made to caricature his looks and actions ; whether the Insectivora 

 should, or not, be included among the Carnivora, or whether the bats 

 should rank with them, or the human species should receive some 

 compensation for his union with the apes, by the association in the 

 same order of creatures that can soar into the subtle air ; and by the 

 quinary system, in which it was not unfrequently the case that four 

 out of the five divisions in a circle were in tolerable accordance with 

 Nature, while the fifth was a kind of refuge for all such destitute 

 groups as neither of the others would admit, the Ruminants, originally 

 made distinct, being united in one order with the Pachydermata and 

 Edentata ; these have since all been separated, and the question was 

 but very lately mooted, — should the coalition between the two former 



