Be gh iy te Ne Ne AE cea eT ia a aac a 
1878. ] On the Genealogy of Plants, 359 
ON THE GENEALOGY OF PLANTS. 
BY LESTER F. WARD, A. M. 
Gr of the most remarkable anomalies, which the history of 
science and that of the human mind affords, is to be found in 
the appreciation which has been shown of the relationships which 
the different forms of life present. There has been no lack of 
acumen in discerning these relationships, in detecting the differ- 
ences or recognizing the affinities, but there has been frequent 
failure to comprehend their meaning. The term relationship has 
been employed in a sort of metaphorical or metaphysical sense, 
as denoting mere resemblance wholly disconnected from any idea 
of natural dependence; as if the objects of nature were arbitrarily 
grouped into classes, orders and genera by the operation of some 
law of “pre-established harmony.” It might be supposed that 
the term relationship, constantly in use in this sense, ought to 
have suggested the analogy to family, or consanguineal relation- 
ship among men, and led naturalists to seek to account for the 
resemblances observed among plants and animals on some such 
principle as that on which family resemblances are explained. 
Yet this simple deduction proved too profound for the human 
mind, and botanists and zodlogists went on accumulating facts 
down to the time of Lamarck, and most of them to that of Dar- 
win, without perceiving their most obvious meaning. And there 
are still many who fail to perceive it, and who POY, reject it 
when pointed out to them. 
It is perhaps but proper to add that this state of things has 
not been wholly due to an inability to make rational deductions, 
but has been in part brought about by the existence of precon- 
ceived ideas which were sufficient to preclude all attempts to 
reason towards the true conclusion, however plain this course 
might appear to the unbiased mind. 
But now that it is becoming generally recognized that the 
present forms of life are the true descendants of antecedent forms, 
and that the observed resemblances are the physical result of real 
or genetic relationship identical with that which makes children 
resemble their parents, it is but natural that old systems of classi- 
fication should require to be entirely recast and moulded into har- 
mony with this fundamental truth. Such, indeed, is the case, 
and already marked progress has been made, especially in zoology, _ 
