of the Dichotomous System. 55 



and the sheep ; and those which have them shut, such as an- 

 other natural group comprising the rabbit, the cat, the opos- 

 sum, and the kangaroo ! 



The Doctor's botany is on a par with his zoology ; for says 

 he, " In any arrangement which contemplated plants according 

 as their stems were capable of producing flowers and fruit du- 

 ring many years, or able to produce flowers and fruit once only, 

 (and the distinction is an important one,) these two species, 

 the dwarf and the common elder, would have belonged to dif- 

 ferent genera and even different orders." This system of vege- 

 tables now proposed by Dr. Fleming, is not quite new. I have 

 before heard of plants annual, biennial, perennial, and ever- 

 lastings. The credit he deserves, however, is the original con- 

 sideration of it as a natural method of distribution. A simi- 

 lar system depending on their duration must, without doubt, 

 be equally natural for animals, and he will, perhaps, soon 

 publish, with his usual learning, names for the dichotomous 

 subdivision of A?iimals immortal, and of Animals not immortal, 

 in the first of which groups he places himself. 



In like manner our botanist would naturally class one species 

 of willow with arrow-root, because it is monandrous, and an- 

 other with the ladies' -slipper, because it is diandrous. All 

 methods are equally good, all divisions are the same, and he 

 is there ready with his pen to favour all alike with crack-jaw 

 names. But enough, and more than enough, of the above ex- 

 amples, which according to him prove that there is necessarily 

 a rupture of affinities, " when we restrict a genus or species 

 to a single place in our physiological system." If the reader 

 does not think it proved, the Doctor asserts that it is, and 

 that is quite sufficient. 



Dr. Fleming has been, I have already said, so far acute 

 as to perceive that in order to make the dichotomous divi- 

 sion of nature go down, it was certainly necessary in the first 

 place to deny all unity of plan in the creation. So also 

 was it absolutely necessary to attack the law of continuity, and 

 to deny the Linnaean maxim, " Natura opifex rerum non 

 facit saltus";for certainly no method takes such prodigious 

 leaps as the dichotomous, which may also be termed, 'par excel' 

 lence, the leaping one. Dr. Fleming indeed admits that the 

 law exists when the changes of bodies take place with respect 

 to time and space, but says he, " Where is there even the sha- 

 dow of proof that the most perfect of created beings must 

 previously have gone through all the progressive steps of ad- 

 vancement, or that among created beings there is such a gra- 

 dual transition from one kind to another as to render it im- 

 possible for man to pronounce where the one ends and the 



other 



