CLASSIFICATION. 295 



§ 99. Biological classifications illustrate well these phases, 

 through which classifications in general necessarily pass. 

 In early attempts to arrange organic beings in some sys- 

 tematic manner, we see at first, a guidance by conspicuous 

 and simple characters, and a tendency towards arrangement 

 in linear order. In successively later attempts, we see 

 more regard paid to combinations of characters which are 

 essential but often inconspicuous; and a gradual abandon- 

 ment of a linear arrangement for an arrangement in di- 

 vergent groups and re-divergent sub-groups. 



In the popular mind, plants are still classed under the 

 heads of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbs ; and this serial classing 

 according to the single attribute of magnitude, swayed the 

 earliest observers. They would have thought it absurd to 

 call a bamboo, thirty feet high, a kind of grass ; and would 

 have been incredulous if told that the Hart's-tongue should 

 be placed in the same great division with the Tree-ferns. 

 The zoological classifications that were current before Na- 

 tural History became a science, had divisions similarly super- 

 ficial and simple. Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Creeping-things, 

 are names of groups marked off from one another by con- 

 spicuous differences of appearance and modes of life — crea- 

 tures that walk and run, creatures that fly, creatures that live 

 in the water, creatures that crawl. And these groups were 

 thought of in the order of their importance. 



The first arrangements made by naturalists were based 

 either on single characters, or on very simple combinations 

 of characters. Describing plant-classifications, Lindley 

 says : — " Bivinus invented, in 1690, a system depend- 

 ing upon the formation of the corolla ; Kamel, in 1693, 

 upon the fruit alone ; Magnol, in 1720, on the calyx and 

 corolla ; and finally, Linnaeus, in 1731, on variations in the 

 stamens and pistil." In this last system, which has been for 

 so long current as a means of identification, simple externa] 

 attributes are still depended on ; and an arrangement, in 

 great measure serial, is based on the degrees in which these 



